The internet made me , I
will destroy you .
Abstract
1) Aesthetic vs academic –
the rise of net art and glitch art in particular have called into
question the need for or relevance of academic institutions and
qualifications to practice an art form that institutions and the art
establishment in Ireland either seek to ignore or subvert to their
own purposes , watering them down and realigning them to the
traditional art historical agenda , the travesty of the ‘post
internet’ label cooked up by galleries to institutionalise and
profit from net art.
2) Contrasting of ways of
working though co-operation online in social media groups such as
Glitch arts collective , the sharing of ideas and tools and
methodologies in a free and open-source way , self organising events
in contrast to the way the traditional art world works ie the Wrong
Biennale, Spamm Super Modern art museum , online exhibition spaces
created during the pandemic such as Fubar 2020 and Fubar 2021
modelling buildings and environments to recreate no longer accessible
spaces.
4) Open source tools and
knowledge of coding, scripting, software and hardware/operating
systems /networking ( physical or social media corporate or fediverse
) as being the new artistic literacy and spaces of importance in
opposition to the traditional tools, perceived route of approved
learning and spaces of legacy art which are required by away from
keyboard old school tie networks and privilege .
5) The current state of the
digital and netart spheres being ignored by established bodies In
Ireland other than that which can be easily academicised in favour of
Creative Ireland like agendas which seek to turn Irish arts into
heritage rather than think of where the arts In Ireland could be
going , or that can be codified into yet another academic paper or
jargoned up for the latest open call.
( authors note numbers in brackets within the text are links to websites or resources - full links in the footnotes)
The
internet made me , I will destroy you .
My
working name is crash-stop ,
a name I’ve been working under for the last year.I have
explained the circumstances of how that came about elsewhere (1)
but for now lets start with what I am and what I do.
I am not an academic, nor am I
a researcher in the traditional sense thus this paper does not
conform to the ‘correct’ academic format. My research is for me
and others that might find it useful, to that end I share my work and
research under creative commons licence CC
BY-NC-SA 4.0 (2)
My position as an artist can
be summed up by quoting Jean Dubuffet in his 1951 essay
‘Anti-cultural positions’ (3)
‘the
values celebrated by our culture do not strike me as corresponding to
the true dynamics of our minds. Our culture is an ill-fitting coat–or
at least one that no longer fits us. It’s like a dead tongue that
has nothing in common with the language now spoken in the street. It
drifts further and further away from our daily life. It is confined
to lifeless coteries, like a mandarin culture. It has no more living
roots.’
I
find it hard to relate to the concerns of most
art made and exhibited
within in
Ireland, its concerns and interests are for
the most part not mine,
its structures and
language seem insular, overly
academic, self-perpetuating
and hung up on notions of Heritage and nostalgia.
I
make Glitch
art. I
share that work online. One
of the challenges that we must face in
the digital
art world is that the unique work as a copyrightable thing is
redundant as a concept. Creative
Commons which
came
about via
the
work of Lawrence
Lessig (4)
and
the ideas
of the Free
Software
Movement
(5),
is
one way of dealing with that .
Creative
commons licences vary but have at their core these four freedoms as
defined here (6)
‘1)The
freedom to use and perform the work
2)The
freedom to study the work and apply the information
3)The
freedom to redistribute copies
4)The
freedom to distribute derivative works’
I’m also an associate member
of Format C (7), which hosts and
runs the biggest and longest running festival of Glitch Art in the
world Fubar (8)
‘“Format C” is a
non-profit artist organization based in Zagreb, Croatia (EU), active
in the area of visual and multimedia art. The Organization’s focus
is in new media art experiment and non-profit collaborative cultural
creation.’ with support from the Ministry of Culture, Croatia.
The main project I’m
collaborating on at the moment is the online/offline Formatc project
medialab , Suda. (9)
What
is Suda ? – Suda can
be seen as a server
/ manifesto as
installation art.
It’s
online,
accessible via browser at
suda.formatc.hr ( when
running) and offline via
prebuilt live and installable Linux iso’s
that
run on any x86_64 computer capable of running a fully libre os.
It takes the form of a
multi-user collaborative
desktop environment built
on Parabola Linux and
ideas outlined in an
initial manifesto document (10)
and on the ideas of
libre-culture and libre-software. Decisions
as to design and implementation were taken collectively during weekly
online meetings via the BBB ( big blue button ) open source meeting
software (11)
running via Format C’s own infrastructure.
Collaborating on Suda,
and especially the interface design and shell-scripts
that make it work the
way it does has been one
of the biggest influences on my own work in recent years.
The
way that Suda functions is very visual, and deliberately frustrating
to use , part performance , part manifesto and highly
interactive, what you do on the screen becomes the work
(12)
I
find it paradoxical that
as
an
artist based
in Ireland I’m
an associate member of an
arts organisation based in Croatia and
not part of any arts
organisation in Ireland.
Giving
up traditional media in 2012,
I
found traditional
galleries unreceptive to what I was making but
online spaces welcoming and receptive.
Working
online has given
me a community, tools, and audience that I have not
found in the Irish arts world.
Its
not just me, new artists that you do not know of are sidestepping
traditional
routes into art by
picking up a smartphone or laptop and just making.
This
environment teaches the skills and tools needed and provides and
creates the aesthetic and critique, and has developed in parallel to
the traditional art world, if, as I believe, these new aesthetics
will come to predominate our
visual culture at least,
it will replace
that which has come before.
The
need for the traditional
cultural institutions
that
bring on and foster
the new generations of artists is gone, all that is left for
them is heritage and
investment art because
they no longer speak or understand the language.
Notable
exceptions to the
lack of representation of digital arts In Ireland would be the work
of aemi (13)
which
though not focussed on digital work exclusively I have found to be
open and accessible and welcoming.
I
also see a ray of hope in the programs of CCA , Derry-Londonderry
(14)
which
are forward looking and welcoming of digital art especially the
recent (15)
‘Tilt
at windmills’ exhibition curated by Mirjami
Schuppert which
could teach Creative Ireland, the organisation, a lesson or too about
relevance where rather than focussing on ‘heritage’ culture it
seeks active engagement with the past in the form of using footage
from the UTV archive from the 50’s to the recent past as a starting
point.
Also
worth noting are the Foundation series of exhibitions held in
Tullamore Co.Offaly from 2013 to 2016 (16)
curated by Brendan Fox (17)
were innovative and contained a large amount of digital focussed
work, its also the only time I have exhibited my own Glitch based
work in a gallery setting in Ireland.
But
I could also point out ongoing
online
initiatives such
as
those
run through Domenico Dom Barras white page gallery network
here
(18)
,
which
in its exhibition from March-April
2020 online - ‘OUTBBBREAK’
group
show
hosted by Altered_Data's WPG (
white page gallery) curated by Domenico Dom Barra, was
as far as I know the
first exhibition
in response to the pandemic (19).
There is a medium
article on wpg here (20).
Or
Spamm Super Modern Art museum (21)
And
of course the hypercurated version
of the Facebook group ‘Glitch artists Collective’ (22)
which
chooses and promotes an artist of the month on Facebook
and Instagram,
whose work is then stored on the hypercurated GAC , its kind of a
critical acknowledgment by the community of work which is deemed to
be interesting and/or groundbreaking and as such serves as a guide to
trends and quality within glitch art itself.
Or
the ‘glitch art is dead’ series of exhibitions , organised and
curated via
online communities (23)
and showcasing work made internationally.
And
of course The Wrong biennale (24)
–
which needs no introduction or explanation.
All
of the above are products of and organised through online communities
which
for the most part work outside of the established art world and have
very open and accepting curatorial policies in contrast to my
experiences within Ireland – I have found no parallel initiatives
organised from or in the island of Ireland.
During
the pandemic many traditional art festivals and galleries had to move
to working online, an environment which we as digital artists already
inhabited, trying to recreate a traditional gallery environment. Compare Birr vintage weeks online gallery environment here (25)
with Fubar 2021 here which should be live still to June
2022
(26)
and a quick snapshot video here if no longer available (27)
Birr
vintage weeks online gallery created an explorable walk to view
works in an accessible and easily navigable way, but in a generic
gallery environment which bore little resemblance to its real
life settings in old
buildings and the wider environment of Birr , essentially an off the
shelf generic online
gallery . Fubar 2020 – 2021 took a different approach by recreating
the internal physical environment of Fubar (
akc medika (28)
)
and surrounding buildings ( which had been hit by an earthquake in
2020 and rendered the
traditional venue unusable ) using photogrammetry and other data
within the game engine unity , a
gamified exhibition with respawning and teleporting etc. The Birr vintage week approach subconsciously says
this is temporary and second best, the Fubar space asks
what we can make with this, the
exhibition environment created I would argue being a work in itself.
Notoriety would go to Rua Reds ‘Glitch’ series of
exhibitions from 2012 until
2018
(29)
, which
although being groundbreaking in representing digital art in general
to an Irish and
international audience,
are notorious in online
circles for using
the word ‘Glitch’ and not including glitch art in any measurable
way. Though
the work is digital the word ‘Glitch’ it seems has been knowingly
(?) co-opted because for a while that was a buzzword which caught
attention.
The
Creative Ireland initiative itself continues to plumb the depths by
forcing Irish arts into a heritage cul de sac as in this recent call
from my local arts office ( identifiers redacted )
‘Creatives
Practitioners Support Scheme
Call
for applications 2020
Note
this has a quick turn around and closing date.
(
redacted) have been awarded additional funding from Creative Ireland
to support creatives in accessing the resources and materials needed
to reassess and re-examine their ways of working and dissemination in
response to the Covid-19 restrictions. (redacted) County Council
Creative Ireland are therefore in a position to award grants of up to
€1,000 to creative practitioners working within the heritage and
arts sector.
Heritage
includes the following - monuments, archaeological objects, heritage
objects including archives, architectural heritage, flora, fauna,
wildlife habitats,landscapes, geology, heritage gardens and parks,
inland waterways, folklore and local history.
Art
can include any creative or interpretative expression (whether
traditional or contemporary) in whatever art form, including; visual
arts, theatre, literature, music,dance, opera, film, circus and
architecture, and includes any medium within those art forms.’
When did artists become
‘creatives’ and note also the use of ‘Heritage and art
sector’, art being second to heritage
As Creative Ireland's own
website (30)
states:
‘ Creative Ireland is a
five-year Programme which connects people, creativity and well-being.
Established
in 2017, Creative Ireland was born out of Ireland
2016,
the
hugely successful state initiative to mark the hundredth anniversary
of the Easter Rising. The Programme drew inspiration from the
extraordinary public response to the Centenary and the thousands of
largely culture-based events exploring issues of identity, community,
culture, heritage and citizenship.’
The
original Ireland 2016 program was
a
good
thing
but taking that forward to what seems to be
nothing
short of a realigning of the Arts in Ireland to serve a particular
narrative, the narrative of heritage, tourism and
well being seems
like mission creep of the worst kind.
Much
of the
art
I look at and enjoy these days plays with notions of nostalgia,
especially tech nostalgia,
but it seems to me the arts in Ireland are in danger of being
suspended in aspic.
For
a more interesting take on creativity, inclusivity and openness we
could look at Brendan Fox’s initiative games for artists and non
artists in association with IMMA
Which
started pre-pandemic
offline but then online
here (31)
though the work
included is not exclusively digital art it could only have happened
during the pandemic via digital media and specifically what we call
social media and it is all the better for that. Interestingly
the newer offshoot of that project ‘Museum of everyone’ (31a)
is part funded by Creative Ireland and is a good example of a well
made and inclusive project but I would argue that the need for
Creative Ireland as opposed to more direct funding for the Arts
Council and its projects is up for debate.
The
new artistic literacy is learned online.
To
be literate as an artist I was taught art history,
techniques, a spirit of enquiry,
critique
and craft, to know these things
was seen as essential. What
then is essential to be considered literate as a digital artist
Most of what I have learnt
about digital art and specifically glitch art, has been learnt online
– not through college or courses or workshops run by the various
arts organisations in Ireland, but through looking at and making work
in response to ideas and interaction with artists on Facebook groups
like Glitch Artists Collective (GAC) , (32)
Glitch artists collective tooltime (33)
( the primary source for many tools and ways of working ) where work
and tools and methodology's are shared , passed around and discussed.
Quite often these methods and
tools are not the proprietary ones you would expect, or the operating
systems you might think, often they are open source tools such as
ffmpeg, python and scripts the community itself has created on top of
open-source software or operating systems like Linux ( the Medialab
project Suda is built on a fully Libre operating system called
Parabola Linux (34) ) – this
should be important to the ethos of digital art in general – locked
in SAAS (35)
like Adobe products or paid for Windows solutions or closed
ecosystems like Apple products limit entrance to digital art to those
who can afford them and limit the imagination of those who use them.
The network I have built up
around me of artists I know, work with or talk to is almost entirely
formed through online interactions. Having been a very active member
in many of these groups I am not aware of any great number of Irish
artists working in this field compared to say those from Eastern
Europe, America, France or South America. Those Irish artists work I
have encountered through say VAI (36)
or arts articles or reviews who may have glitch art or digital media
within their work tend to couch their own work as being an extension
of traditional media or that weird term ‘New Media’ with a
suitably wordy and impenetrable text which aligns it with the
language of art criticism, or art-speak, which to me often seems
quite exclusionary.
I find it telling that that it
took a pandemic for excellent talk series such as the Ncad
facilitated 2021 ‘digital cultures webinar series’ (37)
to take place. But still its concerns to me seemed overly academic
and behind the curve, debate around these topics have been ongoing
online for some time.
The work of Elaine Hoey (38)
can be seen as work which reflects some of the common themes of
glitch art and digital art present online in work by Dafna Ganani
(39),
Elena Romenkova (40)
and Dawnia Darkstone (41),
and the work of Wednesday Kim (42)
outside of the online world these ideas seem exotic in the online
world they are everyday .
The gallery language used to
describe Elaine Hoey’s work ‘mimesis’ from 2021 (43)
‘The work also investigates
new technologies such as facial capture, 3D scanning and virtual
reality, developing works that examine the digital human, avatar
performance nature and techne[3], reality and simulation.’
is informative as to the
processes used but misleading as to the newness of the technology –
these have all been techniques used explored and discussed in depth
previously, there is no novelty here why then present it as such?
And for that matter Why should current themes within digital art
only gain validity when placed within an irl gallery context?
There is also strong work
being made by Joanna Hopkins such as the ‘Empathy Machine’ (from
2015)
(44)
Or the photography of
Moon_Harpy (45)
which reflects ‘Themes of cosplay, fantasy, Sci-fi, LARP etc’
which are also present in the ( non digital ) works of artists such
as Rebecca Deegan (46)
Moon_Harpy’s willingness to experiment can be seen in her tutorial
on GENERATMES’ FM glitch art processing sketch tutorial here (47)
which is highly valued in the online community.
Or the work of 4th
year photography student Caleb Daly (48)
which shows a willingness to experiment and integrate some of the
ideas and methodology of glitch art but within the format of digital
photography as an addition to expand the visual language used rather
than a total commitment to glitch as an end in itself ( note also
the use of altered typography one of the themes of glitch art
itself).
Addenda July 2022 - I should also have mentioned the work of recent graduate Katie Whyte but I have only recently discovered their work and their Lucida collective via the VAI newsletter - more info here
And of course the work of
Shane Finan (49) who not only
works with digital media but also actively uses and supports
opensource and creative commons idea and uses PeerTube (49a)
and Mastodon (49b) – parts
of the fediverse (49c) trying
to break free of corporate social media control. A recent exhibition
at the leitrim sculpture centre here (50)
. Interestingly the Eu is starting as an organisation to actively
promote these platforms as alternatives to American based social
media platforms which can only be a good thing (51)
As the traditional art world
that predominates in Ireland is very much stuck in the past and the
online world or work by Elaine Hoey, Joanna Hopkins, Shane Finan and
Moon_Harpy and many others could be seen as what is current we need
nothing less than a drastic realignment of structures and values if
we wish to continue to foster a thriving arts scene in Ireland where
artists are seen in the everyday rather than having to work abroad or
be committed enough to work in the shadows.
Thrown into sharp relief
during the pandemic was the idea that online was thought of as second
best, a substitute for when things get ‘back to normal’ I would
suggest that online is and has been for some time a better space to
exhibit and show work , is much more open and collaborative than any
real world space currently in operation In Ireland.
Meanwhile
art is being made constantly and furiously online at a hectic pace
and watched on devices and made on devices at right angles to the
establishment, be it Tik Tok videos, memes blog posts YouTube
videos and a million and one other forms which seem to splinter and
propagate while the arts establishment keeps on doing its thing and
slowly becoming ever
more irrelevant to everyday audiences – because art made and shared
online is infinitely more democratic and has infinitely more cultural
impact than anything made now in any physical studio in Ireland –
The public experiences the
digital arts in
Ireland on an everyday basis in myriad online spaces
but will achieve
mainstream visibility only
if it chooses to break away from
or take over the narrative current In the established Irish Arts
institutions.
But what need do we have for
cultural institutions which do not reflect culture ? Or for that
matter what need do we have for institutions which teach art which is
no longer relevant or a feeder unit for investment art when with a
smartphone, an app and a decent peer group online I can learn what I
need to know to make art and share what I know ? What about
criticality and in depth discussion and tutoring ? Where then will
that take place ? I would contend that that is already occurring in
online groups, and its language and criticality is separate and
evolving away from standard arts education terms in favour of an
open and evolving self education.
Footnotes and links.
1.
https://crash-stop.blogspot.com/2021/04/well-how-did-i-get-here.html
2.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
3.
https://www.austincc.edu/noel/writings/Anticultural%20Positions.pdf
4.
https://hls.harvard.edu/faculty/directory/10519/Lessig
5.
https://www.fsf.org/
6.
https://freedomdefined.org/Definition
7.
https://formatc.hr/
8.
https://fubar.space
9.
https://formatc.hr/medialab-2021-diwo/
10.
https://pads.ccc.de/sda-manifesto
11.
https://bigbluebutton.org/
12.
https://youtu.be/Yuj_nUcYPLI
( video of running
instance of Suda).
13.
https://aemi.ie/
14.
https://www.ccadld.org/
15.
https://www.ccadld.org/exhibitions/tilt-at-windmills
16.
http://www.foundationartsfestival.com/about/
17.
https://brendanfoxart.com/About-Brendan-Fox
18.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/whitepagegalleryz.
19.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10163244648785307&set=g.333063917586602
20.
https://domenicobarra.medium.com/white-page-gallery-art-curating-and-human-values-8f119f4729e1
21.
http://spamm.fr/ -spamm super modern
art museum.
22.
https://www.facebook.com/glitchartistscollective
hypercurated version of Glitch Artists collective.
23.
https://efenkay.net/glitch-art-is-dead
24.
https://thewrong.org/
25.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKHYJ9gndoU&t=2736s
26.
https://expo.fubar.space/ (
Live till June 2022)
27.
https://youtu.be/v9e77XfPReI
video capture of Fubar
2021 in case exhibition is unavailable.
28.
https://www.facebook.com/akc.medika
29.
http://www.ruared.ie/gallery/exhibition/glitch-festival-2018
30.
https://www.creativeireland.gov.ie/en/
31.
https://www.instagram.com/gamesforartistsandnonartists/
31a.
https://www.museumofeveryone.com/
32.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/glitchcollective
33.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/GACToolTime/
34.
https://www.parabola.nu/
Parabola Gnu Linux
35.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service
36.
https://visualartists.ie/
37.
https://www.ncad.ie/gallery-event/view/digital-cultures-webinar-series-2021
38.
https://www.elainehoey.com/
39.
https://dafnaganani.tumblr.com/post/134196441283/pleasurepack-mediated-performance-with-dolphin
40.
https://www.instagram.com/romenkovaelena/
41.
https://letsglitchit.com/
- Dawnia Darkstone
42.
http://spamm.fr/stream/?g=27#
Wednesday Kim – The Aesthetics of being disappeared.
43.
https://www.elainehoey.com/about-3
– Mimesis
44.
https://www.joannahopkins.com/the-empathy-machine
45.
https://www.instagram.com/moon_harpy/
46.
https://www.instagram.com/rebeccadeeganartist/
47.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi4ce5DTWks
Moon Harpys Fm glitch art processing tutorial.
48.
https://www.instagram.com/calebdaly_/
49.
https://shanefinan.org/
49a.
https://joinpeertube.org/
49b.
https://joinmastodon.org/
49c.
https://jointhefedi.com/
50.
https://www.leitrimsculpturecentre.ie/whats-on/exhibitions/detached-touch
Shane Finan – detached touch.
51.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/04/28/2128204/eu-joins-mastodon-social-network-sets-up-its-own-server
