In
'Simulacrum' Michael
Camille suggests
an alternative view of modernism, and in fact all of art history, one
'which incorporates the notion of the simulacrum'.
That is, a history which follows the progression and understanding or
development of art and simulations. He explains that the tradition of
art is a 'conquest of the real'.
He also states there are implications of this understanding to our
existing system of documenting art history; such as its destruction of
the conceptual value of highly regarded artworks which consider
themselves as a 'realistic' representation, and the change from the
emphasis on 'original' works; as there can be no original in a system
of simulations, and so many works and artists considered fundamental
to the development of movements within modernism would be placed into
a wider chronological understanding of representation of simulations
within art. Artists operate inside the
established system of 'art', but when discussing new digital mediums
and artworks created within them, particular issues arise and begin
to question this established system. Questioning the system also
questions the role of the artists. Perhaps, it could be said that it
is the role of the artist to question the established system. It is
not rather the role of the artist to question the system or even
their duty, as will be discussed; this is simply the nature of the
medium, due to the way it operates and these conceptual its effect
within the current system of art. This essay will discuss the the
work of two digital artists whose work particularly focuses on
revealing the simulacrum of the internet: 'Glitchr' an alias for
Laimonas
Zakas a New media artist from Vilnius, Lithuania, whose artwork has
been described as Glitch art, glitch graffiti, Hacker art,
performance art, computer art and digital art, yet none of these
names are suitable to fit his style of work. Aspects of his work can
also be deemed subversive to the current system of understanding art
work.
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| Mark Napier, 'Riot' - Source: http://marknapier.com/ |
Glitchr's
works are created by exploiting holes within popular social media
sites, in particular Facebook.com where Glitchr manifests as a alias
in the form of the pre-set layout of a fan page within the site.
It allows for users to like and follow the page almost as if
experiencing a performance artist, and Glitchr's artworks use the
uniform paradigm of a 'status update' which is a short and usually
direct micro blog. This allows users to discuss their thoughts,
location, or other forms of information.
The artist creates these glitches through exploitation of html
coding,
diacritic
marks and unicode characters, which create an erratic crawling of
symbols across the users screen over other rigid elements on the
page. His works can be likened to splatters of paint which boldly
destroy the modular uniform layout of the surrounding social network
platform. Another artist
and pioneer of digital and Internet New media art is Mark Napier. His
works 'Shredder' 1998 and 'Riot' 1999 are examples of 'Browser Art'
in which the artist appropriates the format of a web browser but
modifies the programming so that web pages become scrambled messes.
The browser operates in the same way and resembles the format of a
browser, except that the elements such as text, images and the
general layout are mashed together and overlaid. This creates a jumbled image that distorts the
original intention and meaning, and the final images resemble a wild
new media version of an abstract expressionist work. Napier's work
plays upon our understanding of the uniform and rigid layout of a web
page, and its contents.
 |
| Facebook Login - Source: www.flickr.com |
When
Michael
Camille writes about a 'new real' he explains that it is a creation
of a world of simulacrum.
We live now more than ever in 'the age of mechanical reproduction' as
stated by Walter
Benjamin
in his famous essay of the same name. This 'age' has been
created through new technologies which allow for a faster circulation
of information, in particular the Internet and social media sites
are leading to an increasing blur between what is real and what is a
simulation of the real. Simulacrum is increasingly becoming a part of
our understanding of ourselves and our world though social media.
This becomes obvious when we begin to look at the statistics, as
every statistic contributed towards social media becomes a simulation
either in text or image of the 'real'. For example the average
amount of images uploaded to Flickr.com per minute is 3,000. That is 3,000 simulations of life via a photo per minute.
The average amount of tweets per day 190 million, and the total
number of monthly active Facebook users at 1,310,000,000.
These statistics are proof of our need to continuously create and
consume content in these online communities. Social media also
intentionally tries
to replicate and replace life. A clear confirmation of this is
Facebook's tag line: “Facebook helps you connect and share with the
people in your life.“
The
'reality' or Camille's 'New Real' in this media is created through
words and images. Wide access
to these platforms, as well as cheaply available equipment with which
we can access these platforms, (the peak of this being the personal
mobile phone, which can now take photos and access the Internet
simultaneously) allows us to upload and interact with online
communities from anywhere. In the book 'Everyone is a Designer in the
Age of Social Media', Alex Galloway state that “we regularly adapt
our behaviours [to new technologies] and thus, in a matter of
speaking, human action is controlled by technological systems.”
We have moved to a mode of Hyperreality,
and it has become impossible to seperate the world of online
simulations from reality.
Michael
Camille references Hal Foster's contention that abstract painting is
far less subversive to our current teaching of traditional art than
usually thought.
This is particularly apparent when we study the movement of
Post-painterly Abstraction. Both Glitchr and Mark Napier are a
contemporary example of the post-painterly abstractionists, as post
painterly abstractionists sought to remove illusion or figuration
from their paintings.
Glitchr and Mark Napier both work within the formative elements of
the medium, with particular interest in creating a 'glitch', letting
the medium not the artist decide the final form of the work. In fact,
it can be argued that within the social networks that Glitchr uses,
his works are the only real that exists, as all other surroundings
ie. Status updates, photos and advertising are simulations of life.
Glitchr's work acts as a rift in the system, spewing out nonsense
across the page format trying to reclaim the reality of the medium (Refer to figure 1.) Similarly the 'Browser Art' of Mark
Napier such as 'Riot' 1999 destroy the way we interact with images
and information on the Internet. They question the form and content
by breaking the code that constructs the sites, and by disturbing the
layout Napier is able to split the simulation from the medium and
reveal to us the falsehood of images and our accepted 'reality'.
Within a world of simulations Glitchr and Napier's works are merely
an exploitation of the system and medium it operates within.
Digital
artworks produce a number of problems when analysed by our
traditional standards. Michael Camille states that traditional art
history places a heavy emphasis upon the “originality” of certain
works,
that is, a particular work being the original or the first from which
all other copies are derived. In comparison to the tradition of
painting, where there can only be one original from which the copies
are created, digital artworks have no original. Our traditional value
system has a hierarchy. Usually associated with a fetishism of the
'original', this relies on proving the originality of one work over
the other reproductions.
We can see this in the way many popular galleries assert the
originality of their owned works (although this assertion can be somewhat problematic.) This is due to capitalism being reliant on our value in the
conceptional understanding of the 'original' work of art. Camille
contends in his essay that the tactics of the art gallery are similar
to a supermarket by stating “art museums and their spaces and the
shopping mall, similarly both respond to and stimulate the strategies
for undermining the real”.
While many two-dimensional forms of art resolve the issue of the
originality of an artwork, digital art begs us to question our system
of value in the original artwork. Glitchr's and Mark Napier's
artworks are unbound to an 'original', and exists only within their
many copies. While the artworks exist as an image on your screen or
as a print, they also exist simultaneously in the same manner on
multiple screens in different environments. In both cases, the work
becomes tailored to the user, the situations surrounding the works
and the environment in which it is viewed. For example Glitchr's work
is displayed within Facebook.com, surrounded by 'status updates',
images and adverts that are tailored by the user's personal life, and
as with Mark Napier's work, the image is dependant on the site being
visited and the users web history. Both works can be accessed and
viewed through the world wide web and can be displayed on a computer
monitor in the viewers home. In this situation the work would be
framed by the viewers personal items and surroundings. Through the Internet, art
works have become transmittable, and because of this the same work
can take many vastly different forms. Digital art begins to undermine
the very need for contemporary Galleries, as digital art can exist
outside of the gallery space and is able to reach a wider audience
through the Internet. If these works were to be displayed in a
gallery it may destroy their original intention, as they are created
with the intention to be viewed in your own environment; in the
framework of the viewers life. These artworks are shaped by our own
online and real lives.
How
can we value digital art and can it be bought or sold? To value it in the existing
understanding, we must first define what part or existence of the
work is the 'original' and in what form it manifests as a tangible
object. For now lets talk of the existence of the 'original' within
the digital work then delve deeper into what form it manifests as. It
becomes impossible to derive where the original exists in a digital
artwork because the works become reproduced in so many different
representations. The problematic nature of digital art is that each
copy from the original is equivalent in content as the original, to
the point when the original cannot be distinguished from the copy.
This condition of the digital medium is detrimental for our current
value system, because there is no way to distinguish the original
from the copy and so all versions of the artwork have the same value.
In what form does a digital artwork manifest, What does the digital art of Glitchr or Napier
actually exists as? For example does it simply exist as the image displayed on our screen? Or is it
perhaps the programming or the code that creates Glitchr's status's?
Maybe it is the binary language formed within the computer which
creates the program for Napier's browsers to run within? Does it
exist within the electrical impulses of the computer? Perhaps the
hardware? The
question of the place where these artworks exist is an important
factor when talking about artworks in terms of simulations. Digital
artworks exist only as simulations, in fact as simulations within
more simulations. With so many reproductions of Glitchr's or Napier's
artwork we lose the tangible 'original' in the artworks. This creates
a problem with the traditional value system, because how can a
intangible work have a monetary value?.
In
conclusion, artists interest in new technologies is not limited to
curiosity with a new medium but also how the medium can effect our
established social and art system. If we discuss the tradition of art
as a continued dialogue of simulations and simulacrum then it is in
no other medium than within digital systems that this becomes
apparent. In this age of digital reproduction “It is in fact the
artist... who in this reactionary scenario alone has access to the
real. As the last, sad remnant of production in a culture of
consumption.”
Artists like Glitchr and Mark Napier create 'glitches' and unexpected
scenarios within these mediums, to create a tear between the
simulacrum, simulations, the digital system and our expectation. By
doing this they reveal to us the truth, that the 'online' world is
the 'new real' and exists as the simulacrum of reality, and it is the
role of these artists to reveal to us the 'real' in a system of
simulations.
Daniel Thomson 2014
