Express yourself we own you!

In July 2007, I was invited to Medialab Madrid to give a lecture within the “First Inclusiva-net.org Meeting”. The theme of the event was “New art dynamics in Web 2 mode”, and I took this invitation as an opportunity to take a closer look at the relation between art and Web 2.0. The following text is an excerpt of my lecture.

Technical nomenclature and social dynamics

In the core of all Web 2.0 innovations stands the idea to separate form and content. Content is fed into a database and from there can be connected and displayed in manifold ways. Users no longer need to know coding in order to publish online, but can upload their content simply by using a browser. Technical innovations of Web 2.0 include server-software, content-syndication, messaging-protocols, standards-based browsers with plugins and extensions, and various client-applications. These differing but complementary approaches provide Web 2.0 with information-storage, creation, and dissemination capabilities–that go beyond what the public formerly expected of websites. Advocates of the concept suggest that technologies such as weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, Web APIs, Web standards and online Web services imply a significant change in web usage.

The web as a platform–one of the key phrases in the field–means computing platforms serving web applications to end-users allowing the use of these applications entirely through a browser. “The creation of network effects by an architecture of participation”, another key phrase, refers to the fact, that any content may be enhanced by the way it is organized and categorized. Very often content is organized around a personal user-account which requires registration¬–although most users prefer not to reveal their real identity. Many users invite their friends in groups and thus share their favourite content, or the rating of the content creates links to other people with similar preferences. Another quality, which is ascribed to Web 2.0 is that it fosters ‘collaboration’ between users. The different ways of organizing content have an enormous impact on the social dynamics of a platform. Wikipedia says at this point: “Web 2.0 can also refer to a social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and the market as a conversation”. The driving force of Web 2.0, the ‘content’, is provided by the users who either produce it themselves, or copy and paste it from other sources (TV).

‘participatory’ – ‘emancipatory’ – ‘revolutionary’

How does the arrival of Web 2.0 reformulate the relation of media and art? With this question Stefan M. Seydel from the Switzerland-based Internet platform rebell.tv
started his interview [1] with Peter Weibel, director of the ZKM (Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany) in February 2007. In his answer, Weibel who is known to be a pioneer in promoting media art as a curator and theoretician–and who also worked as a media artist himself–puts Web 2.0 in a historical context when he states, that “... for the first time in history, the visitor [he is talking here about a museum situation] can act on the eyelevel with the artist. He can not only interact in a pre-determined way, let’s say within an interactive installation, but can contribute his own content.” From that, Weibel concludes, that Web 2.0 provides the tools for an emancipatory use of technology, and that the superior position of the artist will be deconstructed through these tools: “Artist and visitor are on eyelevel with each other.”

Interestingly, the location of the described ‘emancipatory’ use of technology is not the publicly accessible space of the Internet, but a museum, where the visitors interact with an art installation. This ‘machinery’ includes a software component (“algorhitmic construction”) which is able to transform and display the images and videos the vistors have made themselves, e.g. with the help of their mobile devices, and then uploaded. The fact that visitors are able to interact with an installation, not only by selecting or changing pre-produced material, but instead, by generating and delivering their own images and films, is to Peter Weibel, a highly emancipatory quality.

In all Web 2.0 rhetoric, the term ‘content is said to be the driving force, but what is the actual role of the ‘content’ for a Web 2.0 based interactive art work? Does ‘content’ equal the art work? Certainly not, it is totally exchangeable, and according to the definition of Prof. Gerhard Pfennig, head of the German collecting society for visual arts, VG Bild-Kunst, ‘content’ means nothing but material to feed (fill) digital memory and transfer capacities.[2] The actual and unreplaceable part of the art work, of course, is the ‘machinery,’ the technical infrastructure which stores, administrates and displays the content.

In fact, at the end of the above mentioned interview, Weibel compares Web 2.0 installations with the work of Andy Warhol when he says that Warhol’s work was not to create images, but to rework and recontextualize images. The comparison is interesting and somewhat accurate, although it is in contradiction to what Weibel had said earlier. In the same way, that Warhol’s appropriated images from the mass media were exchangeable and received their value through being integrated within an artisitic concept/machinery, the material provided by Web 2.0 users serves as a lubricant for the ‘machinery’. However, the key difference here is that the users who produce the content are not at risk to find themselves in the role of–or on the eyelevel with– the artist.

But is it art?

Nevertheless, the idea of democratic and participatory media production has a long history in the arts. Starting with Berthold Brecht’s radio-theory in the 1920s, the video artist Nam June Paik [3] took it further to the level of video and TV production, describing the scenario of a participatory TV production for the purpose of “integration and mutual understanding, a television made from everybody for everybody,” in 1972. He was talking about a “broadband communication revolution” already 35 years ago, thus anticipating YouTube’s [4] slogan: “Broadcast yourself.” In 1992 the art television project “van Gogh TV” offered an open platform during the 100 days of documenta9. This was the first experimental implementation of bottom-up Television within an art context, while a lot of community radio and TV stations had been established in the 1970s, mainly for local audiences. Meanwhile, Paik’s dream of an information super-highway has become reality, and the Internet offers a wide range for all kinds of media production. But is Web 2.0 the truly emancipatory platform the pundits claim it to be?