net art

Appropriation Art from Early Net Art to NFTs

Texts

In an order issued on October 25, 2023 in the District Court of Central California, judge John Walter condemned artists Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen to pay Yuga Labs, the company behind the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), about 1.6 million dollars, including statutory damages, fees and other costs. The decision followed a summary judgement issued on April 21, 2023, saying: “The court granted summary judgment in Yuga’s favor on its false designation of origin and cybersquatting claims, and against defendants’ First Amendment, nominative fair use and unclean hands affirmative defenses, as well as defendants’ counterclaim for knowing misrepresentation of infringing activity.”
I wrote this essay for a workshop held at the University of London in September 2022, and first sent it to the editors in March 2023. It has been released recently as part of the book NFTs, Creativity and the Law: Within and Beyond Copyright, edited by Enrico Bonadio and Caterina Sganga, and published by Routledge. In it, I contextualize Ripps’ practice as conceptual appropriation art. Judge John Walter, I strongly disagree with you.

Domenico Quaranta, “‘If You Don’t Want Something Stolen, Don’t Put it on the Net’. Appropriation Art from Early Net Art to NFTs”, in Enrico Bonadio, Caterina Sganga (eds.), NFTs, Creativity and the Law: Within and Beyond Copyright, Routledge, London 2024, pp. 201-217.

The Byzantine Generals Problem – Essay

Exhibitions, Texts
the byzantine generals problem

For the online exhibition The Byzantine Generals Problem, which is still available online at Distant.Gallery, Aksioma produced an exhibition booklet which still sums up very well what I believe art on the blockchain is and shoud be. Check it out at the link below!

Domenico Quaranta, The Byzantine Generals Problem, exhibition booklet, Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana 2022

The Non-Standard Head for A Slice of the Pie at Kunsthalle Zürich

Exhibitions
The Non-Standard Head mock-up, courtesy Larysa Pauk

The Non-Standard Head is a curatorial project for A Slice of the Pie, a work by artists Silvio Lorusso and Sebastian Schmieg open to remote collaboration. Conceived by Domenico Quaranta in collaboration with the Net Art class at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milan, The Non-Standard Head sees participants working collaboratively and performatively to design a non-binary, multi-gender, multi-racial, multi-species, post-human, post-anthropocentric human subject. The action will unfold over the course of the day on Dec. 22, 2022 (2-7 p.m.), and can be followed online at a-slice-of-the-pie.live.

More info after the break. Italiano giù giù (°Д°) ლ(° ◡ુ° )ლ︵‿

Continue reading →

Browsing bottom-up alternatives for Art on Web3

Lectures

On October 22, 2022 I took part in a round table hosted by the Uzbekistan National Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, organized and moderated by Silvia Dal Dosso and Giacomo Scandolara, with Andrea Baronchelli, María Paula Fernández and Ryder Ripps. The complete recording is available online, kindly provided by the Art and Culture Development Foundation under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Uzbekistan and the Giga Design Studio. Additionally, an edited transcript of the conversation has been recently made available by Silvia Dal Dosso on Nero Magazine. Check it out!

After the Bubble: NFTs as a long-term artistic medium?

Lectures

On November 12, 2022, I had the pleasure to introduce and moderate a conversation between María Paula Fernández, Michelle Kasprzak, Vuk Ćosić and Cornelia Sollfrank in the framework of the conference “From Commons to NFTs”, organized by Aksioma – Institute for Contemporary Art in Ljubljana. A video recording of the conversation is now available on Youtube. A transcript of my intro speech with references and links has been minted on my Mirror blog for those of my readers who’d like to collect and support.

“History in the Present Progressive” . Surfing with Satoshi review on Outland

Texts

Brian Droitcour, one of my favorite art writers ever, honored me with a review of my book Surfing with Satoshi. Art, Blockchain and NFTs (a few copies are still available here). It’s criticism, so don’t expect only kind words, but some of them really make me proud as they confirm the value and durability of all the work I put in this book (with the priceless support of my publishers, Postmedia Books and Aksioma). A few quotes:

“Quaranta’s account, which addresses the rise of NFTs and the connections between artists’ recent use of blockchains and historical interventions into art markets, sets a high bar for others that will follow.

So far Surfing with Satoshi is the only book of its kind: an attempt by a single author to weave a motley array of histories—of art movements, markets, technologies, and critiques—into a coherent narrative.”

“His book’s greatest strength is the persuasiveness of his links between blockchain-based art and twentieth-century conceptualism. The historical orientation of Surfing with Satoshi is what makes it durable, despite being written in response to—and during—a specific moment.”

Of course, I publicly apologize with artist and theorist Rhea Myers if I inadvertedly misgendered her. Her work, ethos and life embody so much of what this book is taking stance for. A new run of print will come out soon, and these and other mistakes that readers helped me to detect will be amended.

Brian Droitcour, “History in the Present Progressive”, in Outland, July 19, 2022,
https://outland.art/domenico-quaranta-surfing-with-satoshi/

Interview | Arshake

Texts
Rafaël Rozendaal, Observation, 2022. Navy Officer’s Club, Venice Meeting Point. Photo courtesy Domenico Quaranta

Elena Giulia Rossi asked me a few questions about the topics of my book Surfing with Satoshi, one year after the first Italian edition, and in the days when cryptocurrencies are falling free and the new English edition of the book is coming out. The interview is now available on Arshake, in Italian and English (translated by the magazine). We discuss about the countercultural aspects of net-based art, the new challenges to the preservation of digital media, the blockchains environmental impact, speculative bubbles and utopian promises. Check it out!

From Context to Content: On the Preservation of Net-based Art

Texts
Domenico Quaranta: From Context to Content

“From Context to Content: On the Preservation of Net-based Art” is a text commissioned for and published in Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface, edited by Antonio Sgamellotti, Brunetto Giovanni Brunetti, Costanza Miliani and published by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020. Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface consists of a series of chapters written together by scientists, art historians, conservators, curators and artists dedicated to conservation, execution techniques, languages and conceptual topics. The book largely covers execution techniques, material’s conservation and languages of artists, representative of twelve different countries, all protagonists of the development of innovative significant techniques and methodologies.

Science and Art. The contemporary painted surface

Science and Art: The Contemporary Painted Surface is available on Amazon and other bookstores. Alternatively, you can buy single chapters of the book here. Below you can find an abstract of my contribution, that can be bought in full following this link.

Continue reading →

“For net art, being on the web has always been the consequence of a choice of freedom, not an imposed condition.” Interview on Generazione critica

Texts

In this recent interview I had for the online magazine Generazione Critica I discuss about the internet as a space of freedom vs confinement, net based galleries and shows, the success and failures of net based art. Available both in English and Italian.

“Like many other realities, in this time of lock-in and fear of human contact, the world of art has been forced to migrate online. Some have been content with putting things on their social media or live streaming on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube, or to further utilise their mailing list as a communication tool; the more adventurous organized online exhibitions, fairs and virtual viewing rooms. All of a sudden, the network has changed, from a place of communication and support to physical space, to the only possible space for the manifestation of art. Given the current circumstances, it was predictable that the artistic practices that had long ago chosen the network as their primary space of existence would find renewed interest. There is nothing wrong with that, a reinterpretation of the net art tradition might prove to be one of the positive aspects of this unfortunate period, and teach to the “non-native” arts something about this space. But describing net art as perfect for this moment of forced imprisonment on the screen and on the net is very dangerous, because it risks falsifying completely its nature and jeopardizing its understanding. For net art, being on the web has always been the consequence of a choice of freedom, not an imposed condition. We choose to make art on the net to explore new conditions, to be part of a community, to establish a direct dialogue with the spectator and with the public space of which we are part. That’s how it was in the Nineties, and continues to be today, but with differences. Think about Land art: it was, and in some ways still is, a refusal of the white cube and its implications, the search for huge spaces, the desire to leave a formal mark on the natural world and to create new spaces for relationships. But if, due to some cataclysm, the whole world of art was forced to leave the museums and galleries, and retreat to the Nevada desert, would they continue in the same way? Would we all become Land artists?”

Go on reading…

Sopravvivenza programmata

Book, Texts
Valentino Catricalà e Domenico Quaranta (a cura di), SOPRAVVIVENZA PROGRAMMATA. Etiche e pratiche di conservazione, dall’arte cinetica alla Net Art, Edizioni Kappabit, Roma 2020. Brossura cucita, 350 pagine, ISBN 9788894361803

SOPRAVVIVENZA PROGRAMMATA. Etiche e pratiche di conservazione, dall’arte cinetica alla Net Art è un volume che ho curato con Valentino Catricalà, raccogliendo contributi di Laura Barreca, Laura Calvi, Valentino Catricalà, Alice Devecchi, Roberto Dipasquale, Ben Fino-Radin, Marialaura Ghidini, Oliver Grau, Jon Ippolito, Laura Leuzzi, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Alessandro Ludovico, Dorcas Müller, Stephen Partridge, Domenico Quaranta, Iolanda Ratti, Cosetta G. Saba, Domenico Scudero, Azalea Seratoni, Elaine Shemilt, Gaby Wijers. Già disponibile sul sito dell’editore, lo potrete trovare presto nelle migliori e peggiori librerie.

Sopravvivenza programmata è il tentativo, unico nella sua completezza nell’editoria italiana, di affrontare il nodo cruciale del rapporto “arte e tecnologia” dal punto di vista della conservazione, nella complessità delle sue articolazioni e nel suo sviluppo diacronico. Attraverso contributi ormai classici o redatti per l’occasione, il volume articola le teorie, le etiche e le pratiche della conservazione delle opere d’arte quando applicata a media effimeri, time-based, vincolati a tecnologie soggette a obsolescenza programmata e a infrastrutture dal ritmo evolutivo incessante.

Dall’arte cinetica al video, dall’installazione interattiva alla Net Art, dalle collezioni agli archivi, si sollevano quesiti quali: cosa significa conservare? Chi ne è responsabile? Quali sfide devono affrontare i musei di arte contemporanea? Come si può programmare la durata?