Maria Amelia Bulhões – aica brazil
My proposal in this conference is to open a dialogue with my peers about the experiences I have been developing in the labyrinth of cyberspace since 2005. The internet is a global phenomenon with multiple dimensions that increasingly occupies the lives of all, direct or indirectly, regardless of personal choice. Its advances are fast and continuous. The development of Web 2.0 and locative media have enabled us to share the communication and production of knowledge. Art was not left out of this process, so how can art criticism not be included?
Web 2.0 is a concept used to describe the technological trend that strengthens the processes of information exchange and collaboration of Internet users with websites and virtual services. The term was coined in 2004 by the American company O’Reilly Media, to designate a set of services, based on the concept of performance in platform-based applications involving participatory uses in the form of communities without the need for a greater knowledge of information technology. The goal of these services is for the online environment to become more dynamic and enable users to collaborate in the construction and organization of content.
The new communication forms that thrive in these more open, flexible and democratic virtual social networks encourage the dilution of traditional hierarchies in a sea of content that is not classified or ordered and is not so easily controlled. Authority, authorship and ownership are confused in this space, where copy and paste are standard procedures and forms of appropriation and hybridization are generalized. Virtual social networks are constantly being expanded. They respond to the demands of contemporary society, which seeks ways of sharing in a very stereotyped and segmented world where great narratives have failed. This society, thirsty for ways of interaction, share interests and build new contiguous utopias through computers.
All those involved in the expansion and sharing of artistic sensitivity cannot fail to participate in this networking and intercommunication of interest, which meets the traditional aspirations of all of us. These actions via the network allow and invite partners that together establish changes in the usual sense of communication. It can open up to participatory, eccentric and unsafe practices that fall outside the social control and authority of the art system.
My purpose here is to discuss my personal practice through this labyrinth and extract elements from this discussion for its continuity in a more efficient, critical and creative way. I want to approach my professional experience in the internet from three angles.
As a first aspect I want to present my research on web art with the analytical blogs and sites that I put on air as part of this experience. The goal of it is to analyze and give visibility to these practices, removing them from the ostracism due to their conflict with the interests of the establishment.
I propose an approach of their trajectory to the latest trends. I have highlighted the thought processes of artists and their creative formulation, noting the participatory nature of their work, their experimental exploration of the environment and its relationship with the contemporary art thinking.
I have been working on the subject of territoriality in contemporary art since 1999, focused on digital media productions since 2004. In the initial stages of my studies a basic task arose: a survey of works and artists. Something not as easy as one might initially imagine, since these works are scattered throughout the internet, with no specific indications or directions to their location. They need to be discovered through various processes of research online and also reading some specialized writers dedicated to technological niches.
Having overcome the first difficulty in locating the works, in order to exploit them I came across another problem: how to obtain basic information about them, such as author or team, country of origin, creation date, specifications etc. The publication on the internet, in 2007, of my blog ‘Territorialidade / territoriality’ http://territorialidadeterritoriality.blogspot.com.br/was my first experience of this research project and led to many more questions.
The blog supports a reliable database containing information about more than 300 artists who have jobs and projects focusing on web art. It is continually expanding, and it is organized into four categories: Landscape, Memory, Cartography and Cities. It aims to document this online production that spreads throughout the virtual universe in a continuous flow, giving it a resting place, a meeting point.
One issue to note is that this is a bank of thematic data, focusing on territoriality. As a result, many important and prominent works of web art are not listed here because they do not fall within the themes. Each work is presented with its title, access link, name (s) of author (s), place of origin, date of creation. Moreover, there is a small description to assist Internet users in their understanding and also two pages of images of the work. This set of information, which seems pretty obvious, requires much research.
From this experience I have supervised various projects of students in creating blogs. This more consistent relationship with the production of blogs encouraged me to create in 2010 the site ‘Art Reflections http://www.ufrgs.br/artereflexoes/site/‘, which is an online space for the dissemination of my practice in the art field. Recently revamped and updated, it contains a compilation of my reflexive production over a working life of several decades. The site offers the possibility of access to various texts and older, already deleted or difficult books, and my latest work, most available online only. The site is constantly updated according to the development of my activities.
Also available are pages on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and Google Plus, which disclosure my research activities as well as events and other relevant matters to the field of visual arts. I regularly publish information about the research, blogs and sites in these social networking platforms, increasing their diffusion.
An important contribution to the monitoring of the impact of this work with blogs and websites is the evaluation of data access; in this sense the Google Analytics tool provides an important technological support. We put this tool on blogs and research project sites and from the information received I can make the observations. This data visualization tool allows many analyses, but we are mingling in it slowly, without much prior information and discovering everything little by little.
As a second aspect to be addressed regarding my critical practice on the internet, I want to focus on acting as a member of the permanent staff of columnists of the respected online newspaper “South 21” http://www.ufrgs.br/artereflexoes/site/category/coluna/. Started on June 4, 2011, it maintains a weekly publication schedule, presenting, until December 2013, eighty-four editions.
In this experience, I had a particular interest in offering information about visual arts to a wider audience, demystifying the idea that this is an arid subject restricted to a group of experts. Considering the online medium of publication, I question the best ways to exploit resources in the era of the social network. Therefore, I discuss topics and key events, using clear and accessible language, which attracts the interest of different people to the activities in this artistic area. As the newspaper is online, many texts, images, links, videos and other resources are made available on the Internet, and much meticulous research is carried out to enrich them with additional information.
The extremely positive impact of this publication is verified by the access data that indicates an average of a thousand readers per text; with the most widely read achieving around 3000. The range of the column inside and outside the art world has not yet been subjected to a specific review. What is observed is that indirect access (people who have not received the online link, but came to it by reading the newspaper) is almost always greater than the direct access.
The column is not intended to review events or comment on works or artists, but rather to open channels of communication with a wider audience, providing them with information to better understand the visual arts. To this purpose I use my knowledge in this medium as professor, researcher, art critic and curator.
The texts are connect with real everyday life, answering questions that people have about this universe, which many call, in a discriminatory manner, “the art world”. Even with the intention of avoiding the rigidity that dispels the interest of readers, the column seeks to maintain the rigor that ensures the reliability and quality of what is offered in terms of information and reflection. The type of text developed in the column always shows reflections and interpretive considerations, which makes it also an educational resource to be used by art teachers in the classroom, including college courses, according to the reports received.
On the other hand, people who are not from the area leave messages, suggestions of topics and make challenging comments, which help the columnist in his further reflections. This dialogue is the greatest objective of this paper, since, misinformation and indifference of the general public in relation to the visual arts is a problem to be faced with creativity through art criticism. What feeds the column is the conviction that, presented simply and with a wealth of information, art can be an enriching experience that opens new horizons for every human being, from different areas of professional performance and different levels of training.
My third approach concerns curating an exhibition of web art for the International Curitiba Biennial 2013 http://www.webarte.bienaldecuritiba.com.br/en/about. I tried to approach this production, which presented excellent and challenging works, from the point of view of the audience. The fact that some works are gathered together in this event in a site created especially for its presentation, and published in the General Catalog and Guide of the Biennial, offers them an insight into the medium of art.
Visiting the web site of the Biennial offered a challenging experience for both conventional internet users and those who frequent the artistic media. The show ran completely online. The site had access links to each of the works of the 11 national and international artists selected. The presentations of the works and artists were accompanied by texts and other materials produced by the curators, with media indexing information.
In addition to the specific Biennial web art site, a Facebook page was created for the dissemination of various materials on the artists and their works. QRCodes (1) were placed in the physical space of the biennial to promote access to the site. The research team developed informative material relevant to each artwork.
QRCode (abbreviation of Quick Responde Code) is the trademark of a kind of barcode used in mobile devices to enable and facilitate the access to a website.
In presenting here my personal experience of online art criticism I observe the pathways I followed and the doubts I experienced to articulate my knowledge with the diffusion of my work in the internet world. I want to expose the limits and possibilities of uses and action, considering visual arts are usually outside the everyday universe of most individuals. However, my practice has to deal with the accessibility to the network, which breaks through the ritualistic structures of art in their exhibition spaces. I need to incorporate the unpredictability, instability and mutability, inherent in online support, which inevitably affect my work processes, balancing the desirable and feasible. How am I dealing with this and what are its consequences in my practice of art criticism?
My first question is regarding the number of hits and strategies to disseminate this reflexive production to a broader and more diverse audience. Considering the viral possibilities of the medium and the gigantic volumes of hits obtained by videos on YouTube, for example, accesses to websites and blogs are quite insignificant. Of course, if we consider public access to art exhibitions we can also say that few people take advantage of what is on offer.
Currently my research dissemination strategies have been restricted to the work of colleagues in social networks. I wonder if it is possible to engage the interest of a wider audience in relation to the visual arts? In this case, how would it be possible to disseminate critical proposals by articulating them in user communities? How can an art critic structure its discourse to function in this interactive space, at the same time local and global? I like exploring the global diffusion of the virtual environment, interesting the public in different geographical areas. So I also attached the Google “Translate” tool to some sites and blogs. It is not ideal but it is a possibility of global communication.
Many questions are still open. What interests can be interlinked to amplify discussions and consolidate actions? How can I expand my critical activities without allowing myself to be engulfed by the flow of material through global virtual space? How can I question the elitist aspects of the art world and embrace everyday life? Will it be valid to seek professional support from the area of virtual marketing to enlarge the number of hits? Would such use be valid in the field of art?
My second problematization concerns the difficulty in exploring the interactivity allowed by Web 2.0. I think it could use many more of these features, but so far it has not been able to. I question myself about this and I do not think it’s a matter of time or mastery of the tools, but rather difficult in adapting the language and practices of criticism to these resources.
How would it be possible to adopt a perspective focused on interactive and collaborative references, and not a more contemplative one? How could one deepen the communicative possibilities of the online medium, exploring messages, discussions, contents and comments from the public? This seems to me the most important challenge facing this complex and labyrinthine universe.
Answers to these questions will be defining new roles for art. Some authors, following the ideas of Pierre Levy, see a new horizon delineating itself in cyberspace, carrying the ideals of democracy and joint participation. However, the reality opens a wide range of constraints and contradictions, requiring for their analysis conceptual tools that are more specific and questioning. How can one venture critically among these virtual swirls that give rise to new flows in communication and human creativity?
The era of globalized culture, with all its complexity and ambiguity was only beginning when Walter Benjamin explored it with his keen and sensitive eye. Today, it is necessary to update one’s thinking. The Internet puts us in a universe where we need to decipher these new puzzles constantly, in order to avoid being devoured by the Sphinx of mass communication.
Texto publicado no Jornal da abca.
n° 32 – Ano XII – Dezembro de 2014
