Vito Campanelli

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“After spending several days at a major European festival of digital art and culture, I had the impression of a community in which good manners and friendship where the rule. Smiles, handshakes and back-patting dominated within this laidback atmosphere, in which the participants were safe from unwanted or threatening currents. This brings to mind Baudrillard’s reference to a certain ‘accomplice paranoia’ in the world of contemporary art. In other words, this is a scene that constantly eludes the possibility of critical judgment, and leaves space only for a friendly, necessarily convivial, sharing of nothingness’. In such a context, open dissent is seen as utterly inappropriate. Nothing is allowed to disturb the quiet harmony of a community that in fact comes together for comfort rather then to confront.”

Vito Campanelli, Web Aesthetics, Institute of Network Cultures / NAI Publishers, Rotterdam 2010, pp. 42 – 43.

Caitlin Jones

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“Thus the studio is a place of multiple activities: production, storage and finally, if all goes well, distribution.” [Daniel Buren 1979]
These words by Daniel Buren were originally meant as a critique of the traditional studio system, but the quotation in fact offers a prescient description of art production today. For many artists the notion of the studio does not present a problem to be dismantled or deconstructed. The laptop studio serves simultaneously as the tool, the space, the product and the frame. This conflation of the studio’s many functions is the goal, and quite often the meaning of the work.
The “post studio” laptop studio has other meaningful implications for contemporary art production. The concept of access transforms significantly within this notion of the studio. Access to (virtual) studio space, public access to artists’ work, artist access to materials—each of these transactions is enhanced in the shift. Traditional “open studio” conventions are rendered obsolete as, by its very nature, the laptop studio can always be “open.” The “post studio” laptop studio also significantly disrupts the temporal process of the traditional studio—moments of research, production and dissemination are continually evolving and reorganizing.
In these ways, post studio practice in a contemporary sense could be understood less as a reaction against established norms of production and distribution and more a reaction to expanded cultural platforms writ large.”

Caitlin Jones, “The Function of the Studio (when the studio is a laptop)”, in Art Lies, Issue 67, 2010.

Jennifer Allen

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In the last issue of Mousse Magazine (Issue 26, December 2010, pp. 196 – 200), German art critic Jennifer Allen published an interesting article titled “From Media to New Media”. Addressing some recent events and publications, from Free to CRUMB’s latest outputs, she argues that the most revolutionary features of digital media – both in terms of distribution and production – are having little or no impact on the contemporary art world. Definitely a worth reading. Here a couple of quotes:

“While describing the gradual acceptance of new media art and artists, the retrospective view of A Brief History points to a basic conflict: to remain true to techy origins or to become part of the museum and the art market.”

“If there’s a new democracy to celebrate in the new media, the most democratic dimension is hard to see. While anyone can be an artist, a photographer and a filmaker […] everyone will not make it into the museum and the art market. We all increasingly use the same tools to do different tasks, even the same tactile gestures of clicking, saving, copying, pasting, sending. But that radical equality has not quite movedbeyond the screen.”

Nicolas Bourriaud

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A couple of quotes from Nicolas Bourriaud, The Radicant, Sternberg Press, New York 2009:

“today, one must struggle, not – as Greenberg did – for the preservation of an avant-garde that is self sufficient and focused on the specificities of its means, but rather for the indeterminacy of art’s source code, its dispersion and dissemination, so that it remains impossible to pin down – in opposition to the hyperformatting that, paradoxically, distinguishes kitsch.”

“home computing has gradually spread to all modes of thought and production. At the moment, however, its most innovative artistic applications stem from artists whose practice is quite distant from digital art of any kind – no doubt while waiting for something better to come along.”

Paul Slocum

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“New media art may eventually find its market, but since it currently has not, its prominence in the art archive may depend on those in the field writing avidly about the unique experiences they’re having with art, computers and the Internet. New media artists are pouring themselves online every day to see a fuller picture, and they must report back often lest others miss out on the astonishing beauty of the Internet.”

Paul Slocum, New Media and the Gallery, in Artlies, Issue 67, 2010

The whole issue is quite gorgeous, featuring texts by / about Charles Broskoski, Beryl Graham & Sarah Cook, Angelo Plessas, Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung, Guthrie Lonergan, Tobias Leingruber

Arns & Lillemose

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“[…] both within the computer based art world and the non-computer based art forces are working against an integration of the two worlds that actually both would benefit from.”

Inke Arns & Jacob Lillemose, “It’s contemporary art, stupid”. Curating computer based art out of the ghetto, 2005

Graham & Cook

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“One problem as far as the acceptance of new media art into the mainstream of the art system is that it has been briefly taken up as a novelty and shown only for its newness. The hype surrounding the technology driving new media art hasn’t helped its long-term engagement with the art world.” 

Beryl Graham and Sarah Cook, Rethinking Curating. Art after New Media, 2010