The Internet as a Host for Artwork

This last wednesday, at Lawrence University, Rachel Crowl gave a talk about Web 2.0 and spoke a little bit about what it means to be an artist that experiments with new media. For clarification on what exactly Web 2.0 is, here's a video presentation that is awkward but informative.



Rachel Crowl deals with technology issues that the Lawrence administration encounters, I'm sure she wouldn't like that description of her job, but I didn't pick up enough on what exactly she does for the school. She definitely is really busy and is extremely knowledgeable about technology, the history of the internet, and was overall very informative about all this stuff. She spoke about blogs, such as the one I'm writing on now, and told us that they were the first form of democratized self-publishing. I think this makes sense and it definitely does put some power into the hands of individual people in the sense that an individual can post things to the web for free, you dont have to be a writer for a corporation. The social component of contemporary blogging (or related to blogging) websites acts as what Rachel Crowl called the glue that holds them together and makes them successful. What does this mean for artists? Advancements in technology and the user-friendly nature of the internet has given rise and vast amounts of popularity to websites like Flickr, which host photography. Other websites host other art forms, but photography, or photos of art are probably the most easily recognized art forms on the internet. This gives everyone (artist or not) an equal opportunity to post their content to a host website. I asked Rachel a question along the lines of, doesn't it frustrate you that this puts an artist's work on the same level as a 13 year old's family vacation photos? Outside of how many views a person gets, it's difficult for many uninformed people (maybe someone with an untrained eye) to distinguish between art and bullshit. And even that (the views) doesn't mean all that much; marketing yourself and playing into the game can get you more views than actually having a unique artistic outlook. Should the artist feel an aversion to these types of host websites because it puts their work on a level that seems to degrade it on some level? Rachel Crowl responded by assuring me that it's not the platforms that suck, it's the people that post shitty content. And it's you the viewer who ultimately has the choice whether to look at something or not. And you know, I definitely agree that there's a lot of stupid shit out there for viewing, but I still feel like using an online host that is so immensely populated by users kind of takes a little bit away from my work. It becomes so user friendly and so accessible that my artistic intent, (not to mention the technical skills that art can show) isn't even noteworthy anymore. Overall, I don't like the message that you put out there by using a host website for your content; it's like I'm advertising to someone, I don't like that. Rachel Crowe definitely had an attitude that said "technology is here to help us, to make things easier for us". And for the most part I agree, but I still often feel like it makes it easy for the everyday assholes to try and give the world a message that I don't want to hear. Furthermore, I think that it makes it easy for malevolent authorities to keep tabs on us. Maybe that's delusional, but whatever. I don't really feel that comfortable participating in this technological charade. I really think that it's only as addictive as it is because the internet is a gratification based host and the user can hide is some amount of anonymity.