Art for LULZ

By Shana | Published: June 12, 2010

Note: Now I am going to think of way to really put this in practice.  I hate galleries, I like the idea of media phreaking as an artist.  It’s something I would do not as a gallery professional.  Frankly I would take my art anonymous before anything.  I think it would work better.  I really hate this idea of process process go into gallery process some more.  Not subversive enough.

(Galleries do not promote something about anonymous land, nor about the idea that most things you see do have a pornographic element to it.  They just put all that back in, by being very pornographic about image and by taking down anonymity of art people.)

Technology is for the LULZ.

By that, I mean the LULZ are part of the essential nature of technology is set up in such a way that its essential problems are often uncovered through a somewhat antagonistic social lens which helps us understand technology. . As we grow away from industrialization as a society, large questions of personal participation and how we interact with others start to involve technology. Consumption, its creation, its participation, and its explanation become the Modus Vivendi to understand technology: It is the starting point for the vast majority of individual uses of technology. By doing so, we can help place technology in a more complete framework about its everyday uses and misuses by everyday people.

Conceptual pop feminist artists like Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer start pointing us in directions to analyze technology. The texts they use (such as Kruger’s
“I shop, therefore I am” and Holzer’s “anything is a legitimate area of investigation”) point to how weak yet how strong the viewer is in relationship to the society s/he inhabits. They poke fun at how there are many actions the viewer can take, yet the structure of society makes such action by an individual, alone, pointless. The individual has yet to encounter the other.
Conceptual web artists take this message further: 0100101110101101.org make art through engaging a wide variety of anonymous users in prankster tricks where only inaction is the inherent point. NO FUN(2010) and Vaticano.org (1998) both point to the inability of the vast majority of users to really act in the face in the face of a disturbance of their functional reality.
Other net.art practitioners such as Jodi.org and Blast Theory are still working within a paradigm in which recreating and guiding the viewer through artificial reality to point out the lack of choice with actions. Jodi chooses tactical meanderings and hidden messages: The individual still encounter alones. It is Jodi’s perspectives on the web, and one has to take apart their work to understand it. Blast Theory chooses to move the web into a constructed reality that encounters real space through GPSs. While innovative in turn, it does not point to the reality constructed here by the vast as of yet.
a new generation of artists, such as Mark Beasley and jonCates of criticalartware, Brian Piana and Jason Sloan have noticed what Henry Jenkins, Manuel Castells, Lev Manovich, and Lawrence Lessig have noted: Within those limits placed upon us by society, the act of recombining other pieces of what we already take part of is potent- that recombining work is inherently critical, even if it is only local. Their work starts to move us away from the act of being “alone” in which we are with “others” vis a vis the data we share.

Netmarenetdreams.net takes this idea to a whole new level by collectivizing the idea of sharing by making a gallery of found and made net objects every year, even if the location is “unreal.” Miltos Manetas repeats this trick for the Venice Biennale, which had an Internet Pavilion for the first time this past year. Art becomes a shared decision of a community through re-combinatory means. Alone, these works mean nothing, once gathered, they have artistic aura again despite that they are infinitely accessible to the public and shareable by that public. Context for links becomes everything- however choice is always factored in through the fact that this is a community of artists.

However, for the vast majority of people on the Internet, what is meant when engaged in sharing is by no means clear. While we share content, and engage in collective activity, most of it is still in accordance to some sort of predetermined path, a passive one oriented towards consumption. In that, we are not much further removed from previous technologies, where we are told what reality is by those far above us who make it. When we recombine it, we generally recombine it on their terms.

Traditionally, crackers for the LULZ, from the likes of 4CHAN, hacked material for the sake of humor about the situation described above, on the unwilling creators and consumers who floated along a given path, seemingly choiceless.

In an odd twist of fate, their darkness, their need to just lash out at consumption for the sake of drama, points to how one can point out the very disruption consumptive technologies cause. Technology and its consumption cause structure to exist in society. It creates inherent drama as we adapt to structure and that structure adapts to us, as we try to find space to be expressive within the choices of more powerful creative entities. When we put data out there, we both reinforce and undermine its power, if we are aware of the oddity of the drama. The LULZ dramatizes, and points to the drama of consumption and creation-it points to the awkwardness of the very existence of consumption and participation, and how there are always alternative choices if one thinks and grabs holds of others. The audience has to encounter and react. One could not cause the drama if it were not inherent to the materiality of technology, which it infinitely bends by many people. By pointing out that it is disruptable and disruptive, one realizes,

Technology is for the LULZ.

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  • http://twitter.com/emerigent/lists/memberships Emeri Gent [Em]

    Shana this is not a response to you as much as what reading this stirred in my own soul, so please permit me to eat my own fodder :-)

    There is something infinitely valuable in thinking about things we have not thought about up to the point of not over-thinking it. If I am preoccupied with my own thoughts then I have provided no room to welcome new ways of sensing (seeing, hearing, feeling etc). In this case I found following up on the “criticalartware” reference, personally valuable, especially since it opened the door to interviews with people such as Jane Veeder

    Jane Veeder Interviewed by Criticalartware
    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3790866…

    This I take to be information value but just as importantly interactive art. The ability to search or link on the net becomes itself an artform that has an immediacy and observational relevancy. There is no end to the pathways one can discover and before these pathways become chaos, the art here is the discovery of order. This is not randomness in action but emergence through exposure and disruption.

    Disruptive Realism
    http://designmind.frogdesign.com/videos/whats-p…

    The most disruptive thing we can personally do is to wake ourselves up and the irony of this awakening is to discover that we are asleep. It is what one does at this point that determines whether existence is consumption or the realization that our senses are art and that technology is the extension of our senses. If we take this extension as a serious preoccupation it is not difficult to see how we can be consumed either by our own ego, or by the products of the goods we buy.

    When our senses are art itself, then it does for art what art is meant to do, which is to make us think but is thinking or even having a sense of humor really a freedom? I therefore have not determined for myself at what point enslavement begins, that is whether we are enslaved by our desire or need for consumption or whether we are enslaved simply because we are consumed initially by the production of our own thoughts?

    If I am consumed by my own thoughts, I am in no better position than those who choose to be thoughtless and led by or defined by the thoughts of an external agency or authority. Without a certain level of consumption we will die and even infants denied the consumption of love can die of neglect. This is at a certain level nutritious consumption, a consumption that is necessary to survive and then there is consumption necessary to thrive. It isn't consumption that is my focus but how it merges within and as an outflow of fresh humanity.

    It is the obesity of cultural values which moves us away from the kind of nutrition that fosters humanity; and into the grosser form that is akin to Animal Farm, the kind of existence that is depicted well by Pink Floyd below. Humor and shock value may lead us to think more but to think more means inevitably we also consume more.

    Pink Floyd Video
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T30cQgHoRE

    So then how does one utilize art to find nutritious forms of humor, where laughter is the art? When Sacha Baron Cohen created Ali G, Borat and Bruno, people consumed humor to the point where they were to drunk to recognize who Cohen draws his material from. Then there are the Cohen brothers whose dark humor is clearly one that goes over the head of those less informed and sharpen the sense of those more aware. Yet awareness itself is not awakening.

    A Serious Man
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FYtprwg1As

    If art is our senses and we have the choice to take our sensory input seriously or with a pinch of salt, it is clear to me that the happy medium is to be serious without being consumed by the nature of our seriousness. If ever we need a reminder of that, we do still have access to Monty Python to bring us back down from the heights of a serious life:

    Joke Warfare
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I3zCQzZx68

    The switch between the serious and not being serious is then as I view it, in our own minds. Technology then is an extension of our art if that is art begins with our own senses and we are living and breathing artform. We therefore have eyes that are wonderful camera's, memories which are great paintings, hearing which is great radio and touch which is superb theater. All of this art is contained within us and then we have technology that extends that.

    When I think of technology, strangely I am inclined to think of narcosis, thus I arrive at strange destinations such as this:

    From Techno Narcosis
    http://www.brynmawr.edu/visualculture/journal/e…

    as well as this:

    Awakening to the Deathless
    http://www.journeyhome.com/passages11.htm

    What I therefore am conscience of is taking my own journey but I am not to sure how awake I really am for having undertook it. It is only when I see how different it is what I have written compared to what it is I have read, that I can make a guess as to what I might be learning. That learning exists because much of what I read above was thoroughly new to me. This is disruptive discovery, the type where one wakes themselves up rather than join the chorus of people who are busy nudging others, without really nudging themselves.

    Thanks very much for this write up, it has taken me into new fresh pastures I would never have contemplated to uncover before. I am not blind here in my own consumption but cognizant of having read and digested a page full of nutritious cerebral fruit. The best kind of fruit I would say, because that type is a gift that keeps on giving . . .

    [Em]

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    Emeri Gent-

    Anyone who can riff and include “the killer joke” from Monty Python is
    welcome to do so. ;)

    Feel free to share (and feel free to share the essay as well)

  • http://twitter.com/emerigent/lists/memberships Emeri Gent [Em]

    Oh No Shana, I think I feel another riff coming, as a venerable exercise in more of my cerebral sneezing :-)

    One of the things I see, as expressed in the spirit of all great societal generalizations, is that we seem to becoming more of a shareware society rather than more of an aware society.

    “Aware” brings me all the way back to Plato's Cave where the only hardware were once rocks and perhaps wooden clubs, though of course I deeply apologize to neanderthals and cavemen for further generalizations of what probably was a far more sophisticated society than the modern day couch potato one that watches American Idol (or more appropriately American Idle).

    Someone, somewhere on the Internet Writing about “Cavemen”
    http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/cavemen.htm

    I thus internalize this to view the act of sharing as a tribal ritual. Yet the only way I think one can actually exit Plato's Cave is to turn around to all shared space club and rock holders, is to say “I am outta here” (and I don't mean that in a Shania Twain sort of way). We seem to make a much vaunted deal about reversing the effects of the social enslavement that was the industrial age and returning to our prior tribal roots. I thought that the allegory of Plato's Cave is about moving forwards and outwards, not backwards and inwards. We do have tribalism in our world and it can look rather a bit like this:

    Tribalism in Congo
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2661365.stm

    Tribal society does have a connecting spirit but it can also serve to provide learning about people like Amuzati Nzoli (the world's most famous pygmy). If I am ever to get out of Plato's Cave then I need to not worry about famous pygmy's but search for other less known people. If I use the Congolese example, it just happens that I happen to have found one:

    Dieudonné Kabongo
    http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/article/17530/dieudo…

    Just that name alone is worth the admission price to whatever type of comedy that he performs. This also makes me wonder whether “Reality TV” actually exists once we are personally outside of Plato's Cave? I pick Kabongo because his first name is so difficult to remember unlike Eddie Kadi. Kadi must have mastered the art of personal branding, (branding self being that conception where you only reveal those parts of you which can be “ka-ching-able” and can be brain-etched onto the cranium of a large scale entity called “the follower”.

    Eddie Kadi
    http://www.eddiekadi.com/

    So what is the big deal about any of us getting out of Plato's Cave? Especially when the few that do will find that it is an awfully lonely pathway to enlightenment. Moreover when all branding, marketing and profit making is actually done within Plato's Cave, who is going to know that we actually got out? So for me personal writing or riffing is exactly that, stuff that is not written specifically for the sharing and grasping reach of the tribe. (No one really wants to digs deep into hypertexted links as a pathway to all together new discoveries, what the principally want to do is to share).

    So if the tribal ways are a reconnection to the past then what is the future? If political correctness will remain the collective future, then I must think of abandoning all my contrived and naive hopes of emerging from Plato's Cave. Instead I would then advocate the one great shared experience which all actors or agents in life's drama can participate in together, which is to dig a tunnel downwards towards the center of the Earth.

    Further down into the bowels of the Earth there must surely be at least some point well before molten magma puts pay to inward bound discovery, that one may find a rather quite delightful corner of splendid isolation, (but which of course comes fully loaded with the best in class internet connection).

    Shana, that dutifully marks the end of my riff, now that I can feel really free to share without actually sharing :-)

    [Em]

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    :-)

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    Emeri Gent-

    Anyone who can riff and include “the killer joke” from Monty Python is
    welcome to do so. ;)

    Feel free to share (and feel free to share the essay as well)

  • http://twitter.com/emerigent/lists/memberships Emeri Gent [Em]

    Oh No Shana, I think I feel another riff coming, as a venerable exercise in more of my cerebral sneezing :-)

    One of the things I see, as expressed in the spirit of all great societal generalizations, is that we seem to becoming more of a shareware society rather than more of an aware society.

    “Aware” brings me all the way back to Plato's Cave where the only hardware were once rocks and perhaps wooden clubs, though of course I deeply apologize to neanderthals and cavemen for further generalizations of what probably was a far more sophisticated society than the modern day couch potato one that watches American Idol (or more appropriately American Idle).

    Someone, somewhere on the Internet Writing about “Cavemen”
    http://www.matrixbookstore.biz/cavemen.htm

    I thus internalize this to view the act of sharing as a tribal ritual. Yet the only way I think one can actually exit Plato's Cave is to turn around to all shared space club and rock holders, is to say “I am outta here” (and I don't mean that in a Shania Twain sort of way). We seem to make a much vaunted deal about reversing the effects of the social enslavement that was the industrial age and returning to our prior tribal roots. I thought that the allegory of Plato's Cave is about moving forwards and outwards, not backwards and inwards. We do have tribalism in our world and it can look rather a bit like this:

    Tribalism in Congo
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/2661365.stm

    Tribal society does have a connecting spirit but it can also serve to provide learning about people like Amuzati Nzoli (the world's most famous pygmy). If I am ever to get out of Plato's Cave then I need to not worry about famous pygmy's but search for other less known people. If I use the Congolese example, it just happens that I happen to have found one:

    Dieudonné Kabongo
    http://www.cafebabel.co.uk/article/17530/dieudo…

    Just that name alone is worth the admission price to whatever type of comedy that he performs. This also makes me wonder whether “Reality TV” actually exists once we are personally outside of Plato's Cave? I pick Kabongo because his first name is so difficult to remember unlike Eddie Kadi. Kadi must have mastered the art of personal branding, (branding self being that conception where you only reveal those parts of you which can be “ka-ching-able” and can be brain-etched onto the cranium of a large scale entity called “the follower”).

    Eddie Kadi
    http://www.eddiekadi.com/

    So what is the big deal about any of us getting out of Plato's Cave? Especially when the few that do will find that it is an awfully lonely pathway to enlightenment. Moreover when all branding, marketing and profit making is actually done within Plato's Cave, who is going to know that we actually got out? So for me personal writing or riffing is exactly that, stuff that is not written specifically for the sharing and grasping reach of the tribe. (No one really wants to dig deep into hypertexted links as a pathway to all together new discoveries, what they principally prefer to do is to share).

    So if the tribal ways are a reconnection to the past then what is the future? If political correctness will remain the collective future, then I must think of abandoning all my contrived and naive hopes of emerging from Plato's Cave. Instead I would then advocate the one great shared experience which all actors or agents in life's drama can participate in together, which is to dig a tunnel downwards towards the center of the Earth.

    Further down into the bowels of the Earth there must surely be at least some point well before molten magma puts pay to inward bound discovery, that one may find a rather quite delightful corner of splendid isolation, (but which of course comes fully loaded with the best in class internet connection).

    Shana, that dutifully marks the end of my riff, now that I can feel really free to share without actually sharing :-)

    [Em]

  • http://shanacarp.com/essays ShanaC

    :-)

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