<nettime> net.space or white.cubism?

[robert adrian <rax@thing.at>]

Hi

The net.art & space.nospace threads seem to be overlapping ...

Josie Berry wrote:
>but - as Peter Osborne said in a recent lecture - art that moves
>outside the gallery doesn't escape the logic of the white cube.
>Art space follows the artwork and forms a protective bubble
>around it -

Walter Benjamin pointed about 70 years ago out that "technical
reproducibility" had the effect of poking a pin into that bubble.

The "white cube" is an hermetic, controllable space, closed off
from the distractions of the everyday world. But the everyday
world in which we live is crowded with many different and very
noisy media. One of the most serious problems for artists who
have grown up in the traditions of the "white cube" is to come
to terms with the fact that there is no way to control the
experience of their work in these media -- especially in the
case of communications media like radio, tv or internet.

But lets stay with the internet: It is impossible to control,
or even to know, the context in which your work will be
experienced--what computer, monitor or bandwidth your viewer/
partner uses, what other browser windows are open on their
monitor, what they have just been looking at/hearing, what they
will view next. They may be playing an mp3 track while viewing
your carefully crafted masterpiece or shopping on line while
your lovely flash graphic is fickering in the background--not
to mention the fact that they may be listening to the radio or
talking on the phone.

What this means is that, unlike the clean white institutional
art-space where the viewer enters a programmed context designed
by the artist and/or curator--the media art-space is determined
by the viewer/user who programms the space, context, and thereby
the work, themselves. Parallel worlds ... !

>What I'm looking for -and maybe it's like chasing the
>proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow - is work that
>at least makes a tear in the art space bubble.

IMHO its already happening ... but there's lots of resistance
from the "white cubists" and other control freaks :)

b.


______________robert adrian_____________

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