YOU ARE AN ART COLLECTOR: OWNING AND INTERACTING WITH INTERNET ART

Collections Corner | Jaime Meier 

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Photo courtesy of Jaime Meier

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of seeing "Age of You" at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). The exhibition is a fantastic dive into our complicated relationship with technology and its inseparable presence in our lives. A quote by Liam Young has continued to haunt me, "Ideology rarely evolves at the pace of our technology. As we turn our gaze towards the machine landscapes, we need to radically embrace our uncomfortable place in a world where we are no longer at its center." As an ever dedicated Musing columnist, I began to ponder the implication of this for collecting.

Traditional art collecting is considered to be different than simply owning art because creating a collection requires a plan for acquisition and an overarching theme. Advice for collecting typically comes down to knowing your taste and purchasing art you like, not just investment pieces. This guidance has been applied to traditional art forms for centuries but has began to be called into question by evolving technology. New software and technological advances have rapidly produced an artistic medium that moves beyond canvas and clay, the machine landscapes of the internet.

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Internet artist, Rafael Rozendaal, displays his web-based works online and in galleries. His art, typically priced at $7,500 has been purchased by private collectors and museums such as the Museum of the Image in Breda and Borusan Collection in Istanbul. Since his works continue to exist on the internet after purchase, anyone with an internet connection is able to view the art an unlimited amount of times. With the art's eternal presence, the collection is no longer at the center of containing the art work, but rather it belongs to the internet itself and the people who utilize its spaces.

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Loren Schmidt and Katie Rose Pipkin are also internet artists who take the ownership of internet art a step further. Their twitter project, @mothgenerator, allows users to tweet a word at them that signals a software generator to create a personalized moth using that word. People are given this personalized artwork that remains on display for the public, creating an intersection of ownership between artist, moth requestor, and the public.

To understand the role of the internet in our lives, we must re-evaluate our definition of collecting. Our ideology about the internet and its ownership are far behind where the internet has taken us. Traditionally, a majority of art collections exist in the shadows and only re-appear for an exhibition or special request.  Someone who possess art is a guardian and the art becomes integrated into a personal canon that expresses interests, desires, and fears. The internet does not allow for its art forms to hide or disappear from sight, instead they become a permanently accessible feature.

Many web-based art forms rely on an interaction to set it a part. Going through a randomly generated art website, such as"My Boyfriend Came Back From War" by Olia Lialina. No one will ever will the exact same webpage nor experience it in the same way, it is not a static art form you can return to again and again for consistency. How can someone own your unique experience? They cannot, this is yours and you get to own it.

As the world continues to criticize, analyze, and relish in the presence of web-based media in our daily lives, one thing becomes clear - we cannot own art the same way we once did. Each person is able to add or refuse art work into their personal collections. I have imbedded 16 links in different letters for you to explore and to aid in the formation of your internet art collection,  are you able to collect them all?

JUST ANOTHER WEEKEND ON THE INTERNET

Beyond Tradition | Erika Serodio

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A few Saturdays ago, on September 28th, Jia Tolentino – a staff writer at the New Yorker – spoke to a sold out Toronto crowd about her new book Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self Delusion.

Trick Mirror. Photo Courtesy of Erika Serodio.

A few Sundays ago, on September 29th, I rode my bicycle to Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art where the Age of You exhibition has taken over floors two and three of the factory-turned-museum building.

Age of You at MOCA. Photograph courtesy of Erika Serodio. 

These two shows felt like companions to each other. Both focused broadly on two words that have become increasingly difficult to define: the self and the internet. Why, you might ask, would I choose to fill my weekend with the bleak and bitter words describing my generation’s demise? The answer is twofold. First, to compare how a more traditional museum space and a space that’s definitely not a museum engage their audiences in an important conversation. And second, because I think it’s an important conversation.

I like to think I’m not a fan-girl kind of girl. But Jia Tolentino has not only made me her fan-girl, she has forced me to reconsider the ways that I think about myself. Her new book is a collection of essays about “the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self” (according to the book’s jacket.) Tolentino was interviewed about the book by Kathleen Newman-Bremang, senior writer for Refinery29. Over 700 people attended the sold out show at Hot Docs cinema. Obviously I’m not the only fan-girl.

Kathleen Newman-Bremang & Jia Tolentino. Photograph Courtesy of Erika Serodio.

Tolentino’s subject matter is dismal. She spoke about the performance of self, about how the internet has monetized identity and selfhood, and about how when we are burdened with an economic mandate our sense of self becomes unclear. And yet, with an uncanny lightness, both her book and her speaking event have made spaces where I feel comfortable and compelled to critique the way that I present myself on the internet compared to in-person.

Age of You at MOCA. Photograph courtesy of Erika Serodio. 

In Age of You, the MOCA exhibition curated by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, the artworks interrogate how “you –and all your online behaviours, enriched data sets and millions of meta-data points –are this century’s most valuable resource.” Age of You was a whole lot more apocalyptic than Trick Mirror. People walked through the exhibition quietly and uncomfortably. I was disturbed by the images and the words presented. This is actually a feeling I love in museums – please, make me feel something! I thought I would come away from this weekend with a better understanding of how algorithms and data sets are affecting me. Both shows made me realize that it’s impossible to understand the effects of the internet because it’s moving faster than we can comprehend. What might be the most important thing is to remain critical of our online behaviours.

Tolentino joked about how several interviewers have commented on the fact that her essays do not have conclusions. But then she said something that had the entire audience laughing in agreement. She asked us to think about some of the best conversations we have ever had and how they usually end without a conclusion. She acted out her version of this scenario by nodding with a bewildered look and said “Yeah, man.” To Jia Tolentino, “a neat ending absolves us of productive discomfort.”

Age of You at MOCA. Photograph courtesy of Erika Serodio.

The last piece in the Age of You’s exhibition is titled The Impossibility of David Bowie Being Dead in the Minds of the Living. It’s an effigy of Bowie’s face that represents his immortal persona. Yeah, man.