1. Social Media week7
Art and Social Media
last update: Mach 21, 2009
Trebor Scholz | LCST 2031 A | Spring 2009
2. What You Need To Know About This Course
week 1 Histories of the Internet
week 2 Histories of the Internet and World Wide Web
week 3
Social Media, Cyber Clustering, and Social Isolation
week 4 Participation: Benefits, Numbers, and Quality
week 5 Quality. The Wisdom or Ineptitude of the Crowd
The Web 2.0 Ideology
week 7
week 6 Art and Social Media
Spring Break
week 8
Political Net Activism
week 9
What Does It Take To Participate?
Why Participate?
week 10
Got Ethics? Labor, Work, What?
week 11 week 14
The Power of Users
week 13 Net Neutrality
week 12 Near Future Scenarios
week 15
Presentations
Trebor Scholz | The New School University | Eugene Lang | LCST 2031 A | Spring 2009
3. Art and Social Media
week 7
March 9, 11
Required Reading (the instructor will hand this out) :
From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms (Casestudies: Runme.org, Micromusic.net and Udaff.com)
Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin
Trebor Scholz | LCST 2031 A | Spring 2009
5. Marcel Duchamp:
a work is made entirely by those who
look at it or read it and who make it
survive by their accolades or even their
condemnation.
Marcel Duchamp in a letter of 1956 to Jean
Mayoux (published in his book La Liberté une
et divisible: Textes critiques et politiques, Ussel,
1979).
10. The model of the well-informed expert
advances to that of the cultural editor who
Artist as Curator Artist as Educator channels the perspectives of other cultural
producers.
Artist as Writer Today, artists can generate platforms such as
Artist as Facilitator
mailing lists, and websites. They can
independently organize exhibitions to
circulate their ideas and set up platforms
from which they can interact with an
audience.
12. From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms
by Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin
What is a platform?
[S]omething in between a content management system, online web site, library, and a club ... A
platform is a website organized in a special way: as a relatively simple database with artefacts,
or a more complex portal built around the database.
-Runme.org
-Udaff.com (self-identified counter-cultural writing)
-Micromusic.net
The 1990s were dominated by art on networks and celebration of communication via internet,
2000-s are marked by the development of platform-based art trends and cultural currents.
-“From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms” by Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin
13. Art on platforms
•fostering creativity, detecting, discovering, defining,
shaping the field, contributing to its development,
contributing to the materialization of a particular
artistic trend
•offline meetings in bars or at cultural events
(micromusic: “microeventz”)
•often no grants as quick responses to artistic trends
are needed and grants cycles are slow. Usually
platforms are driven by enthusiasts who work for
free.
•udaff.com changed language and created a new
literature genre (literature for men)
The 1990s were dominated by art on networks and celebration of communication via internet,
2000-s are marked by the development of platform-based art trends and cultural currents.
-“From Art on Networks to Art on Platforms” by Olga Goriunova, Alexei Shulgin
14. ca
se
stu
dy
13.000 registered users
www.micromusic.net
16. ca
se
stu
dy
50.000 visitors a day,
700.000 pages
17. ca
se
stu
dy
Runme.org is a software art repository, launched in January 2003. It is an open, moderated database to
which people are welcome to submit projects they consider to be interesting examples of software art.
Software art is an intersection of two almost non-overlapping realms: software and art.
18.
19. Art & the Participatory Turn
tool maker
producer
context provider
participant
user/customizer
consumer
1980s 1990s 2004 2006
37. Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited
Youtube | Myspace
Website Impersonations: The Ten Most Visited is a live performance series, which utilizes Web code as
choreography. In this performance - #4 - I am taking on the quot;characterquot; of the Website quot;www.youtube.com - with its
logo and color scheme - and perform its html code, which is fed in from the Web quot;on the flyquot;. During each of the
performances the source code of the website is immediately translated into an ongoing scrolling of images, which
each representing an html tag. Every image shows a movement sequence. Images derive from the html-movement-
library, an online database of user-submitted movement suggestions. The audience on location is also invited to
participate in the html dance. The series is presented in a multiple-media approach of live performance, real-time
web-feed, and installation set-up.
http://www.ursenal.net/wi_ttmv/index4.html
http://www.ursenal.net/wi_ttmv/movie_5.html
40. Cultural Context Providers
Currently, there is much advocacy for cultural practices that demand a particular involvement on
the part of the audience, creating situations in which art projects are co-produced.
People interact with networked computer systems and artifacts evolve out of experimental
relationships between several people.
42. ca
se
stu
dy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STLdUChAmEw
43. ca
se
stu
Less enlightened museums curators frame new media art in modernist terms that are
dy
based on familiar rules for institutional inclusion or exclusion. On which aesthetic
criteria should institutions base their decisions in the face of constantly changing
forms of new media art works?
The media art curator is not exclusively the ‘middle person’ between artists
and museums or galleries anymore. Curators do not merely organize
exhibitions and edit, filter and arrange museum collections. Now, her practice
includes facilitating events, screenings, temporary discursive situations,
writing/publishing, symposia, conferences, talks, research, the creation of
open archives, and mailing lists. Curators become meta-artists. They set up
contexts for artists who provide contexts. The model of the curated website
has become a useful recognition mechanism. In media art many cultural
context providers function in various registers including that of the curator.
Are the contributors exploited?
48. Delocator.net is an online database project that creates a comparison between the amounts of local independently owned cafes
and Starbucks retail stores within a specific zip code. By comparison of numeric quantity and site-specific detail, the user will see
evidence of unchecked aggression and power that corporate businesses have in our communities. The site is also a free online
space for independent cafe goers and owners to promote their cafes by uploading local cafe information to the Delocator.net
database. The creation of other delocated database-driven web sites is encouraged. On the Delocator web site, users are able to
download the code necessary to establish a new database, prompting more sites and databases that may focus on other specific
retail stores. Delocator.net was launched with the intention of becoming a web-meme, sprouting many future de-located corporate
stores. This project is a collaboration between the collective Finishing School and programmer Vasna Sdoeung.
http://www.rhizome.org/object.php?o=33376&m=1017283
61. Burak Airkan's Meta Markets
http://meta-markets.com/
Online stock market for trading socially networked creative products.
Trade shares of social web assets from online bookmarking, social networking, photo and video sharing services.
IPO your own social web work.
62. http://mechanicalolympics.org/
The Mechanical Olympics is a YouTube video competition of Olympic performances made by the elastic workforce on Amazon.com’s
Mechanical Turk website. Every viewer gets a chance to vote on the gold medalists. Winners receive a bonus payment. Three videos
were commissioned for each event and event polls change daily on this interactive alternative to the Olympic Games.
The rules are simple: workers have to wear the Mechanical Olympic signage, perform for the country and event described in the HIT
(Human Intelligence Task) they accept, and create a 30 - 60 second video of their performance. Any abstraction on the idea of the
event is encouraged. They post the URL to their video, and in return, they are paid from $1 - $3 usd.
This project aims to offer the human intelligence task (HIT) workers a creative and physical alternative to their typical HITs. The
videos posted on the blog create an Olympic event for the masses, where every viewer has the opportunity to vote on the
medalists. Participants and viewers are reminded that the amateur can often be just as engaging and entertaining as the professional.
63. http://transition.turbulence.org/Works/superfund/about.html
Each day for a year, starting on September 1, 2007, Superfund365 visited one toxic site in the Superfund program run by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA). We began the journey in the New York City area and worked our way across the country, ending the year in Hawaii.
Today the archive consists of 365 visualizations of some of the worst toxic sites in the U.S., roughly a quarter of the total number on the Superfund's National
Priorities List (NPL). Along the way, we wrote an email update with highlights and conducted video interviews.
64. The best online resource to learn about Mexican border dentistry practice. Get a directory of dentists on the border, listen and download
the hot new corrido - 'Corrido al Dentista' and most importantly gather tips on how to be a savvy medical tourist in Mexico.
DENTIMUNDO seeks to help make your next Mexican vacation fruitful, leasurely and enlightening!
http://www.dentimundo.com/
65. Rafael Lozano Hemmer's Vectorial Elevation
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4xx8sirByI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24Ta337xXNM
A net artwork allows people to see and transform the Historic Center in Mexico City using 18 robotic searchlights.
73. ca
se
stu
dy
User-Generated Fiction on Amazon.com
Kevin Killian: 1525 reviews (as of January 7th, 2006)
He reviews everything from sweet potato baby food, Pasternak's film Doctor Zhivago, Michael Kors khaki shorts, and
The Black & Decker Crossfire Auto Level Laser, to Giorgio Agamben's book State of Emergency.
These are the reviews of Kevin Killian who is a San Francisco-based poet, novelist, critic, and playwright. His texts are
not really reviews. They are autobiographical pieces of fiction.
Killian uses Amazon.com as a platform for his writing practice- a place with an immediate broad readership.
74. Killian's review of a
14K ruby necklace
quot;As an American boy growing up in France, I became mesmerized by an enchanting painting of an ancestor
that hung never very far from the hearth. The painting, smudged by smoke and damaged by Vichy occupation
of the chateau, showed a very thin and angular woman, her face like something reflected in the bowl of a
spoon, festooned in bright stones that gleamed out still bright after the passage of many decades. quot;Who is this
woman,quot; I used to wonder out loud, until one evening, as my grandmother passed through the room looking for
our vanished cat, quot;Gateau,quot; I noticed that she wore the same diamond and ruby necklace as the ancestor in the
old damaged painting.
I persuaded my grandmother to sit down and forget about her eternal hunt for a cat who had died long before
I was born, when she was still a young woman not even married to my grandpapa yet, and to tell me about the
necklace she wore. She took my little hands in hers and, in a low, breathy whisper, told me how she had
stumbled across these precious stones in a valise once. Amazon's 14K Ruby and Diamond quot;Dynastyquot; necklace
looks like a lot like my family jewels; the resemblance is shocking enough to have made me drop my cocoa
while leafing through the jewel pages this morning in an attempt to bring back, madeleine-style, the vanished
days of yesteryear.quot;
