DMCT Week 15

The state of contemporary art is the result of decades of the reconfiguring of the definition of art. Artists like Stelarc, Orlan, and Kenneth Feingold rely on various changes and paradigm shifts engaged by artists decades (or sometimes centuries) earlier. How then, do the theories applied to contemporary art apply to these previous artistic innovators? This post examines how previous artists' work can be seen through the theoretical lenses of contemporary society, and exposes how new theories of society can help explain previous pieces of art.

In class we discussed the role of Cubism as an early example of hyper-text. Picasso (and Braque) take an image, cut it up, and then reassemble into a new reality on the canvas. This does sound like hyper text in many ways (the referential nature of the image), but it more properly sounds like Derrida's notion of deconstruction. By breaking the image down into its constituent parts, Cubists deconstructed reality and realism and reassembled the image in the light of contemporary notions of industry and modernity. Does then this deconstruction indicate something about hypertext? Is hyper text inherently deconstructive by nature, and if so, what does this mean for our current understanding about the nature of information online?

After class, Mark and I were discussing the role of Jackson Pollock in the development of hyper text. Mark argued that perhaps Pollock was portraying the increasingly erratic yet organized images that seem to look like what we now call networks. However, was Pollock envisioning these networks as sources of information? Not really. Instead, Pollock was channelling the shifts in the artistic marketplace and reflecting these shifts in his art. He recognizes shifts in societal thinking and paradigms and these changes are represented in the drastic changes of his art. His "networks" of paint drippings come to indicate a changing relationship between society, reality and art.

Pollock represents a strange time in the world of art history. He is at the tail end of modernism, but is not fully post-modern in many sense. That role is taken up by Andy Warhol. In our discussion, I called Warhol (and more specifically his workshop) a rhizomatic artistic entity. Deleuze and Guattarri argue that contemporary information and society as a whole should not be seen as a tree, but as a rhizome with many entry points and multiple sources of origin and completion. Warhol's workshop is a perfect representation of this concept. Warhol could even be cut out of his workshop, and it would continue producing art. His art was also spread across multiple platforms (paint, music, television, film). Like the rhizome, the Warhol workshop was horizontally stretched across media and maintained a multitude of origins. Warhols work continues to interest us today for this very reason. It tells us something about current society (a rhizome) through the art.

DMCT - Week 14

Is the Internet inherently a resistive and subversive medium? Lurie argues that "the architecture of the web, and the way the users navigate it, closely resembles theories about the authority and coherence of texts that liberal deconstructionist critics have offered by thirty years." He claims that the conservative domination of the primary branches of federal government will come under attack as the hyperlinks, frames and meta-tags of the web begin to provide information that undermines claims to authority. However, does it truly construct subversive citizens, or does it simply offer a new power dynamic that still oppresses some and denies rights to others? The answer must lie somewhere in the middle.

Much of the theory of deconstruction relies on the work of Barthes, who argued that the authorial vision of the text is no longer relevant. Instead, we see readerly works which rely on the interpretation, personalization and interaction of the user/reader. Barthes states that "the work of the commentary, once it is separate from any ideology of totality, consists precisely in manhandling the text, interrupting it. What is thereby denied is not the quality of the text (here incomparable) but it's 'naturalness'" (Barthes, S/Z, 15). Barthes "interruption" is later translated into contexts of deconstructions of texts. According to Lurie then, the medium of the Internet effectively interrupts traditional texts and relieves them of their naturalness and exposes their underlying ideologies. However, this is not an inherent quality of the web. Lurie accords the medium to much agency, when in fact it relies on the user base as a primary agent of deconstruction. If the user does not understand the deconstruction, the web is not successful in subverting traditional power structures.

Luries notion of hypertext still relies on the vision of information distribution and reading as a linear process. Instead, it looks more like what Deleuze and Gutarri call a "rhizome." There is no longer one dominant source of meaning. Rather, we see meaning develop from multiple sources and networks, and users fall into these meanings after following the architecture of the web. The Internet is not inherently deconstructionist, but it is inherently rhizomatic, and as such has the potential for subversion. This potential is seen in things like the Arab Spring, the defeat of SOPA and PIPA, and Occupy Wallstreet. There is indeed a strong indication of the subversive potentials of the Internet, but it is not because it permits deconstruction (which relies to heavily on the user). Rather, it promotes rhizomatic social structures that attack traditional power structures.