Theodora Sutton Should The Art World Resist Digital Art?

An enquiry into whether Art History should embrace Digital Art as a potential major art movement, concerning its medium, concepts and wider cultural implications.

Critical Research Essay for BA (Hons) Degree 2012 Fine Art: Print and Time Based Media Wimbledon College of Art

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Should The Art World Resist Digital Art? An enquiry into whether Art History should embrace Digital Art as a potential major art movement, concerning its medium, concepts and wider cultural implications. The relatively new phenomenon of Digital Art is having a considerable impact on the established art world, yet there is a notable resistance. I am using the term Digital Art to encompass any art that uses programming or the Internet as its medium and underlying concept. By the established art world, I am discussing the art-critic faction that shows notable indifference to Digital Art and the galleries from which it is absent. Whilst a handful of galleries have shown Digital Art over the past 20 years, most have ignored it, and Digital Art appears to be met by a studied indifference by the critics in the art historical community (Elkins, 1997). While it is clear that there are commercial and logistical reasons for difficulties in exhibiting and collecting work of this nature, I intend to focus on what it has to offer in terms of concept and medium. In this way I hope to address the issues that there are between these and the art world, and whether the story of art history should regard Digital Art as its next chapter. In addition to this, I will consider the wider intellectual changes in thought processes and communication that Digital Art encompasses. A clear reason for the critics indifference appears to be the perceived dichotomy between Art and technology. They believe that former deals with imagination and personal expression, while the latter is a collection of relatively sterile techniques. Historically, this impression may have been reinforced at conferences devoted to Digital Art when the delegates were either programmers or artists, and never a crossover. (Patrick Hussey and Charles Beckett 2011) These two supposedly opposing areas of expertise are described by Johnson as existing on the quite separate shores of culture and shores of technology (Johnson, 1997.). Indeed, even when an entire exhibition is devoted to Digital Art, it is never analysed or critiqued to the same degree as traditional exhibitions, which suggests that the modern art world does not believe that it has the depth to offer the same relevance and subtlety as previous art forms. While to some the validity of Digital Art is clear as Academy and the Internet explains: this fact has yet to be acknowledged by the various institutions of, and critical discourses about, art and that in many cases the digital media are held to challenge the widely accepted dichotomy between mere technique and genuine artistry. (Nissenbaum & Price, 2004. p.197) Digital Art and Meaning seizes upon the discrepancy between digital art and art criticism in its opening pages, explaining that the three reasons for minimal assessments of aesthetic value in concrete examples of digital arts are: the preferred safety of a wider theoretical discussion; a lack of faith in the significance of the subject ; and finally, a lack of faith in close reading itself (Simanowski, 2011 p.3). In keeping with James Elkins writing on materiality, I am interested in analysing the material presence of digital art and its interaction with the viewer. This is in keeping with Simanowski s decision to critically discuss rather than make explicit statements concerning the artistic value (Simanowski, 2011 p.5), shunning the safety of critical distance from the work and welcoming every aspect of Digital Art from concept to viewer experience.

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I think the first area of conflict for digital artworks is the supposition that Digital Art disallows for direct craft, and the slowness of the studio (Elkins, 2008. p.5), or the important time spent making work, which allows its ideas to sink into place. In Elkins On Some Limits of Materiality in Art History, he laments the slowness of the studio, suggesting that it stands between artist and the execution of their ideas, even describing it as painful (Elkins, 2008. p.6). With regards to this, it would seem that the use of technology to create artworks, if it is indeed faster, would potentially be the perfect marriage of speed of ideas and craft, enabling the artist to draw a thought in a much more accessible and fast way. iPad paintings use a pre-programmed application to create a variety of mark making not dissimilar to the brushes on Photoshop. Elkins describes the wide variety of mark making as having ..progressed to the point where a colour can be put down opaquely, translucently, transparently, and with a number of specific optical properties. (1997) Elkins also describes the possibilities in digital mark making to imitate almost any surface: Texture options are flourishing; it is now possible to turn a photograph into a crude but passable Cezanne, or make it into a mosaic, or into an embossed sheet of metal. Crucially, these possibilities will not stop here and are in an age of development with, as Elkins (1997) writes, more appearing each month creating more opportunities for artists all the time. David Hockney s 2012 exhibition A Bigger Picture at the Royal Academy controversially includes printed copies of iPad paintings. Laura Cumming s (2012) criticism is that the medium does everything except look like paint[ ] or drawing , which is a mixed critique as surely, if it does everything else , it has certain merits. She criticises the work for being terribly tidy and for not looking like paint when perhaps it is not attempting to be paint any more than an oil painting is not attempting to be a photograph. I think there is a possibility for a new visual language to be built on the use of programming that assesses a line of code as equal to a brushstroke. However, instead of a visual wit of this sort in Hockney s use of digital media, I believe there is in A Bigger Picture, a significant nod to the inherent possibilities that the use of such mark making suggests. Hockney describes them as extraordinary and well worth exploring (2012), just as Elkins continues in Art Bulletin: Art historians should be watching these developments, with an eye to understanding their historical sources and the assumptions they make about how pictures are constructed. (Elkins, 1997) There are, I think, assumptions made by critics about how digital artworks come to be. Hockney may use pre-made applications for his paintings, but in digital works made from scratch, there are no whizz bang programming tricks (to which authentic, meaningful art should naturally be opposed) (Greene, 2004, p.12) in the creation of a digital artwork, any more than there is in a painter s moment of accomplishment in having stepped back to see they have finished a painting. Paul discusses code as the medium, the paint and canvas , of the digital artist, (Paul, 2003. p.125) explaining that it transcends this metaphor in that it even allows artists to write their own tools to stay with the metaphor, the medium.. enables the artist to create the paintbrush and palette. (ibid) There is just as much subtlety and malleability in a piece of programming as there is in paint or clay, and a lack of understanding of the tools available to digital artists is a hindrance to art critics, who in turn do not necessarily have the tools to assess it.

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Fig 1. Floccus, Golan Levin 1999.

Golan Levin describes his work as striving to be educational, whimsical, and sublime. (Levin, 2005) but Floccus, along with Levin s other experimental mark making work, e.g. Meshy or Yellowtail, feels like more than whimsical play: filaments torn by conflicting impulses to simultaneously preserve their length, yet also move towards or away from the cursor find an equilibrium by forming gnarly, tangled masses. They almost feel like living things that respond and move of their own accord as you tease them with the cursor, and demonstrate a rigorous exploration of code s mark making abilities. Levin writes; In 1999 I began to study the means by which dynamic graphical lines could convey a plausible sense of physicality. After some experimentation I developed a model for representing the underlying structure of "physical" lines, [with] the effect of simulating the tensile properties of thin physical filaments, such as hairs or twigs.. In Floccus, ductile filaments drawn by the user swirl around a shifting, imaginary drain centred at the user's cursor. (Levin, 1999) As well as programming being an entirely new craft for artists to build work from scratch, other technical advancements have led to higher levels of accuracy and detail that were previously not possible. Some Digital Art re-defines the possibilities for mark making and representation. For example, where new technology has made a heightened physical presence of nature possible such as in Joseph Scheer s Moth works1 which are created using a scanner that leads to an almost supernatural level of detail (Paul, 2003 p.43). Similarly, Daniel Canogar s Horror Vacui and Digital Hide create giant collages of human body parts, which are then merged to make kaleidoscopic images that transcend naturalism and would not be possible without a computer. (Paul, 2003 p.45) Pascal Domis digital works are highly intricate, and create an inhumanely complex pictorial space (Nechtval, 2005) through the use of algorithms. The images are visually impressive, in terms of their scale and precision. I believe that a critical resistance to this type of work lies in the accuracy of the mark making, and the belief that there is a lack of physical work into the image. However, in Popper s words, because Dombis writes his own algorithms and programs, he can control his germinating art work , explaining that this
Scheer s Moth works include Great Tiger Moth, Ctenucha Moth and Leopard Moth (Paul, 2003, p.43)
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medium allows him possibilities for exploring other computer language techniques and making programming mistakes that turn out to be new explorations in his geometric hyperstructures (Popper, 2007, p.92). Burnham believes that this kind of programming can be the most varied and creative activity that one can do on a salary, allowing the most initiative and variety of personal means of expression. (Burnham, 1970, p.10) In Char Davies Osmose and Ephemere immersants enter her virtual world through a head mounted display and a motion tracking vest that monitors the viewer s breathing and balance in order for the visuals to respond to the viewer s movement: Painterly in its sensibility, Osmose creates a myopic version of a dream world [ ] The VR environment of Osmose also includes a layer of Code and Text , which illustrate, respectively, the software on which the work is based and quotes from the artist s own writings and texts on technology, nature and body. (Paul, 2003, p.126127) Davies Virtual Reality environments are entirely designed by her, with every element of it containing meaning beyond the confines of the display. As Davies explains; I was interested not in the computer technology itself, but in the possibility of using it to create on the "other side" of the picture plane. (Davies, 2004, p.78-79) Digital Art makes the fabrication or creation of any environment possible, right down to the desired colour and texture. It could be argued that Digital Art, especially immersive installation art, is the first medium to provide the possibility for the willing suspension of disbelief (Coleridge, 1817, Chapter XIV) allowing the viewer to understand the artistic intentions not through intellectual contemplation but by being transported into the artist s own thinking space. For an idea to be able to transcend its materials, it, I think, deserves recognition not just of the merits of the concept, but of the ability of the materials to communicate it. I think for this reason, Digital Art could be argued to be the most expressive of materials that we have on offer.

The question of authorship within digital art is a relevant one in several ways. Two of these are concerned over authorship, both within data gathering and in terms of the reuse of imagery for an artwork. An example of individual data input to a larger picture is We Feel Fine, a piece of mapping art which visualises expressed emotion via keywords in online sources in order to present a picture of real-time, global mood. In this work, the people sat online at their computers are the material, or the source designating which mark goes where. Therefore, rather than sitting comfortably within the realm of relational art, mapping art goes through its making process after the interaction of the users creating its data. Data visualisation is a controversial area of expression because it could be argued that it sits further within the realm of the graphic designer than the artist. Simanowski (2011, p. 173) describes Adorno s view that art which claims social relevance by making

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direct political statements is frequently no more than a lack of talent or adaptation, in any event a weakening of subjective strength . (Adorno, 1970, p.356) Although Rubin justifies stepping out of the frame as providing an open space for Listening Post, this leaves the work vulnerable to the accusation that it uses the novelty of data visualisation to make up for a lack of content. (Rubin, 2003) There is no apparent difference between a real-time albeit well designed graph of Internet sources and the work of, say, David McCandless. In Information is Beautiful, which is lovingly dedicated to the beautiful Internet , McCandless (2009) incites postmodernism, describing it thus: let s not pretend that art can make meaning or is even meaningful. Let s just play with nonsense. (2009, p.132) McCandless situates his work within the realm of postmodernism but not of art, allowing for enjoyment without the struggle to unearth deeper meaning. I think it seems appropriate to describe what McCandless and We Feel Fine, and the creators of Listening Post make as falling either side of the line of Is is Art? Art should resist graphic design, as it should resist a graph made in Excel, as neither contribute to the story of art history on their own. Simanowski draws the line of Is is Art? as lying somewhere between We Feel Fine and Listening Post, explaining that although both embody the same lack of message that is characteristic for many of the mapping art examples , [Listening Post] speaks to its audience, providing a specific message through the way the data are presented. (Simanowski, 2011. p.195) We Feel Fine is essentially a data visualisation work, whose main attraction lies in its aesthetically pleasing nature. I personally agree that Listening Post, however, has a clear message and it can only be understood via direct experience. Manovich writes that the role of the mapping artist is not to represent data in an aesthetically pleasing way, but to represent the personal subjective experience of a person living in a data society, and that is exactly what it does. (Manovich, 2002, p.15) When standing in the arena before it with the mechanical voice speaking at you, and hundreds of oblivious user s thoughts whizzing through the LED displays, there is a distinct feeling of loneliness of the user, and the cold unfeeling nature of technology. This sense of artist s message is not so apparent, however, in We Feel Fine.

While it has always been clear that originality is a slippery subject within the art world, Digital Art and especially Internet Art - shows the recycled image to be more prevalent than ever. The question of authorship and message here is equally complex, as the artist s meaning can be buried beneath layers of cultural references. Bourriaud (Bourriaud, 2001) said that we now live in a cultural space of increasingly fluid circulation of signs , where art which collaborates and collages is symptomatic of a society wrestling with issues of on the one hand being constantly hurled images, while the other attempts to guard them with copyright claims.

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Fig 2. In Free Fall, Hito Steyerl (2010)

Hito Steyerl s In Free Fall uses the recycled plane as a metaphor for the reuse of imagery. a plane would be stored [...] because of financial crisis, then blown up for Hollywood film, the debris would be collected and shipped to China and converted into recycled aluminium and the pirated version of the Hollywood film would be printed on the remnants of the plane itself. (Steyerl, 2010) Steyerl s In Free Fall sits within a cultural movement of image recycling that exists as a result of their digital proliferation, or these endless flows of images which are circulated around the globe at every second.. (ibid) It is almost impossible to police the amount of imagery used both for personal and artistic use. Signs and logos form the very fabric of our society, belonging as much to the individual as their origin, as they occupy a part of our lives and have individual meaning to us. This is seen in Grayson s Perry s pots, which are decorated with images from popular culture sourced from Google. (Klein, 2009) Steyerl describes In Free Fall as an investigation into the materiality of digital media (Steyerl, 2010) she explains Digital images are always described as being immaterial uncorporeal, - idealist, in a way[ ] Despite their ephemeral nature they occupy a huge presence in our lives today. (ibid) Virilio (1991, p.114) wrote "now the virtual images of the computer screen seem to confirm not only the existence of certain forms of representation but, more immediately, the objective presence of mental images. Where Virilio describes mental images, I also include digital images, because these images exist within our culture and on our cinema, television and computer screens. The postmodern use of re-articulated imagery can be found in works like In Free Fall and notable others such as Boltanski and Arcangel s. Boltanski s Chance reduces the concept of birth and death down to a grotesque and imposing machine, churning out images of possible babies to match the steadily rising counter in one room, while numbers of deaths rise in an opposite one. The sheer number of photographs of babies seems to take away from what we might be used to: a treasured image of our own child, perhaps. The iconic image for the most cherished thing in society becomes devalued out of volume, yet creates new meaning. Similarly Cory Arcangel s Drei Klavierstcke op. 11 mashes together found YouTube footage of cats playing pianos to create a new masterpiece out of the sheer number and scale of the resource.

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A parallel reuse of imagery can be found in Internet culture, namely through Internet memes 2 which essentially allow for a fast, widespread evolution of ideas within a survival of the wittiest. (Dawkins, 1976) A meme is not an artwork, nor does it even vaguely resemble an intellectual debate, nevertheless it is a widespread example of a low culture movement within interactive practice, which is in turn affecting the way that viewers expect to meet an idea or image. Allowing personal use of film and imagery may appear to cheapen the original. But the interesting aspect of In Free Fall is that its meaning is found in the deformation of one thing to create another, the story of the changes in its form is the artwork, rather than just the film that plays in the gallery. The shift between the iconic image, the singular artwork and the dispersed image is important in relation to Steyerl s work. With the Internet as the strongest example, there is a new level of awareness of information, chaos and order. Steyerl s work even seems to reference entropy when contrasted with the idea that "formation is essentially deformation" (Adorno, 1999, p.254) Leung writes Today the creation of new ideas often comes from pulling apart cultural references and applying them in a new way [ ] In each of [Free Fall s] re-articulations, the understanding of the object [ ] is countered by a surplus of accounts, producing not a clearer definition, but a lack of definition Historian becomes actor, airplane becomes DVD. (Leung, 2010) Digital art embodies the possibility of endless reproduction of the image, seemingly reducing its value when viewed with traditional methods. If, in Burnham s words, the importance of the work of art is seemingly in direct proportion to the number of times it is reproduced for popular consumption (Burnham, 1970) then it makes sense that digital and especially online artworks defy the conventional modes of singular unique object with reproductions that the art world is used to. Burnham posits that paradoxically we reinforce this uniqueness through mass production of the object s image (ibid) It is then easy to see why an artwork that has no iconic image attached to it could seem to be less condensed or as high quality, as an idea. Contrary to this, it seems to me that the possibility for the proliferation of genuine encounters with artworks rather than reproductions - that the Internet provides, is the perfect opportunity for the artistic act to flourish without commercial or logistical restraints. This ownership of imagery is interesting in terms of the resistance of digital art in the art world because I think it challenges older methods of assessing an image, forcing the art world to accommodate for a livelier and often subversive exchange. Digital artworks tend to embody an idea, often subversive or novel, that shows a disregard for the traditional designated authorship and viewer experience and that works, not despite of a lack of physical form, but precisely because of it. While Levin s (2009) Art That Looks Back At You deals with playful albeit relevant issues of the collision of people and ever improving technology, work such as LINUX and Biennale.py embody a much more powerful meaning. Crucially, neither of these artworks
A meme is a wider term first coined by Dawkins to describe a unit of cultural transmission (Medawar, 1977) that in the context of Internet Culture refers to the perpetuation of an image or act, each interpreted slightly differently by the individual. Examples include lolcat s and planking .
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occupy a physical object, (although apparently the entire internet weighs as much as two ounces, which puts it into perspective [Seitz, 2006]) instead, grabbing hold of the viewer s imagination with their outright subversive nature. In these cases, this non-physical presence works in their favour. Biennale.py was a essentially a computer virus art work which took hold of the imagination of people to the extent that Symantec Corporation, world leader in Internet security technology, attempted to find and stop it. (0100101110101101, 2001) Similarly, LINUX, the flagship of the open source movement won the Arts Electronica Prize in 1999 and is an operating system that serves as an alternative to Windows or Macintosh systems on multiple interface devices. As an idea, it is anarchic and creative, allowing for a noncommercially organised design of software that is user orientated. The jury statement from Arts Electronica described the community around Linux as demonstrating ..how strong an aesthetic can be in bringing a community, assets, ideas and attention together (Prix Arts Electronica, 1999), while Academy and the Internet explains that LINUX somehow expresses the net s unique ability to stimulate and support interactivity that generates not only effective products but also new social values. (Nissenbaum, 1999, p.202 ) They continue to say that what makes LINUX art is the emergentist, yet partially directive, mode of creation and the fact that this combination of elements is understood somehow to articulate the essence of net technology. (ibid) McShine explains artists with the sense of mobility and change that pervades their time are interested in ways of rapidly exchanging ideas rather than embalming the idea in an object . (McShine, 1970, p.139) This kind of art is surely capable of lasting longer in our memories than an image. Despite having no physical presence or even reliable image to refer to (except possibly the Google logo), the Internet is an idea that is universally understood and accepted, creating a succinct example of systems consciousness that is taking the place of the cultural obsession with the art object . (Burnham, 1968, p.369) In opposition to this, Gumbrecht writes that the special effects (2004, XV) of modern communication technology has been instrumental in reawakening a desire for presence (ibid). I think this is an important point not only in terms of suggesting a physical presence being needed in a work, but a clear message, another human being s idea being communicated to the viewer. We may be increasingly used to communicating via ephemeral data rather than physical letters and face to face conversation, but that does not mean that art concerning digital media should be cold and removed from the viewer. I think that Digital Art, by its very nature, inherently deals with this issue as it has deliberately taken shape in a new form of presence, and that good Digital Art addresses this issue through a strong message.

An argument in favour of the use of Digital media is that it creates the possibility for true freedom of expression: that any mark, sound, experience, or gesture can be fabricated and used to convey the idea. This is unlike previous limitations of traditional materials that always were the object and were confined to being the object without any illusion or suspension of disbelief ; in Digital Art, tiny LEDs can come together to form an image, lines of code can perform interactively, or surround the viewer to create a new environment. In

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relation to the art world, this would be a strong argument for it to incorporate Digital Art as a method for a better communication of an artistic message than previously seen. An example of an art form which suggests this freedom of expression is summarized not by interactive art where the artist limits the range of possibilities, but by the possibilities of virtual reality as an art form. The philosophy of virtual reality is that anyone can experience exactly what the artist intended them to. Keiichi Matsuda s Augmented Reality could allow anybody to freely contribute to the city making architecture a collaborative and democratic expression of culture and occupancy of space. (Matsuda, 2010)

Fig 3. Every Icon, John Simon

John Simon s every icon is an online artwork that displays every possible combination of squares on a grid. Started in 1997, and it is still running and is still only using the top two lines. One day, several hundred trillion years away it will be finished (Simon, 1997). Every Icon was received well, especially by Matthew Mirapaul ,who reviewed the work in The New York Times with an article headed In John Simon s art, everything is possible (Mirapaul, 1997) suggesting that Simon s work uses technology to realise the possibility to create every image imaginable. I m not sure that Every Icon is very expressive. It can create every low-res black and white arrangement of squares imaginable, but is a 32 by 32 grid the definition of the edges of our imaginations? Technology in the past has been seen to dictate the creative output of the user. Golan Levin quotes Joy Mountford in his TED talk when he says that the mouse is the narrowest straw that you could try and suck human expression through. (Levin, 2009) Perhaps technology is still at a stage of development where it dictates too much of the expression being put through it. Cumming describes Hockney s iPad paintings as fairly horrible (Cumming, 2012), explaining that they are a part of a fall from grace that has seen Hockney s work communicate exhilaration (ibid) and work well thanks to passing through his imagination (ibid) to work which cannot communicate the joy that you know he has had in making them . (ibid) Likewise, Social Formations of Global Media Art describes the critical ideology surrounding Digital Art as believed to spring from the technologies rather than from their complex uses. (Maritegui, Cubitt, and Nadarajan, 2009) Nietsche and T.S. Eliot both reportedly found that using a typewriter dramatically changed the way that they wrote. Eliot wrote in a 1916 letter to Conrad Aiken composing on the typewriter I find that I am sloughing off all my long sentences which I used to dote

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upon. (Eliot, 1916) Similarly, Stingelin writes; Typewritten correspondence suppresses the deliberate impulse, the natural gesture, the unconscious movement, and destroys the illusion of the writers presence. Letters without warmth, without life, without movement, from which we try to glean something in vain. [Anon., 1911] (Stingelin, 1994, p.70-71) Art that uses technology as a means of production may encompass a style of work that is characterised by its readiness leading to a lack of thoughtful consideration of concept and aesthetic, as Eliot wrote The typewriter makes for lucidity, but I am not sure that it encourages subtlety. (Eliot, 1989) Carr warns that The tumultuous advance of technology could down out the refined perceptions, thoughts, and emotions that arise only through contemplation and reflection. (Carr, 2010 p.222) Another recent example of an artist wrestling with this issue is Tacita Dean. "Digital relies on post-production, (Higgins, 2011) she says. No longer do you rely on the moment; and you lose a certain vitality of the moment." (ibid) The Turbine Hall s Film pays homage to physical film; the speed of digital film making is more indiscriminate, instead of creative contemplation found in the magic or luck of filming using physical film, digital media allows the artist to film as much as they like, with the artistry instead lying in the editing or what they cut out. This leads a lack of care in the filming, with more emphasis placed on choosing which excerpts to work with. Shiff argues that Computer technology [ ] allows the testing of images to proceed at such a pace that there may be no time to contemplate their selection. (Shiff, 2003, p.69) Looking at these experiences of using technology it could be argued that creating Digital Art results in a different feel and message to a work that used traditional materials, muting aspects of what would otherwise be an articulated creative message within an artwork. Lanier warns of the danger of the all-or-nothing conceit of the bit (2010, p.201) when considering technology from a philosophical point of view, which essentially refers to the reducible nature of technology. In this sense, Cumming may be right to describe Hockney s iPad paintings as each having some form of a graph in it (Cumming, 2012). Digital artworks then, are always dictated by their data rather than their spirit or their eroticism, to use Sontag s wording (Sontag, 1964, p.14). I do believe that the use of a digital medium does dictate a certain style of creativity, and that to a degree it encourages quicker thinking and less subtlety. However, I do not believe that it dictates a thought process any more than any other medium, as artists have always had to fit their materials and ideas together somehow.

I suspect that within the possibility of Digital Art dictating a message, there is a wider spread fear of the regularity of technology or otherness that is to be found in more than just the art world. The way that technology seems to dictate a certain thought process in the making of an art piece suggests an inherent regularity that is akin to the reaction of the introduction of mechanized clocks. Lewis Mumford (1963, p.15) described that the consequence of regular timekeeping disassociated time from human events. Carr describes how Weizenbaum, building on Mumford s point, argued that the conception of the world that emerged from timekeeping instruments was and remains an impoverished

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version of the older one, for it rests on a rejection of direct experiences (Weizenbaum, 1976, p.25 ) I think there may be a nostalgia for the old reality (ibid) that sees Digital Art as a part of a wider technological threat. Heidegger wrote that the frenziedness of technology threatens to entrench itself everywhere, (Heidegger, 1977, p.35) and it is possible that we are now entering the final stage of that entrenchment [ ] We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls. (Carr, 2010. P.222) Treister describes technology as spooky , explaining that it preserves the dead, in film and video, on tape, on cd, on the Internet, every day millions of dead people or 'ghosts' are walking around doing things [...] There is something spooky for us about technology because it transcends the human body. (Treister, 2009) Treister describes how in the virtual world, it is possible to die over and over again as you attempt different strategies within a game. The Internet, too, is seen as a spookier place: the idea of the all encompassing Cloud [ ] [and] corporations like YouTube co-owning everyone's home movies [ ] the future is getting weirder. (ibid) Like the Black Mirror episode The Entire History of You (Channel 4, 2011) that looks at the possibilities of having recorded memories filmed and watched back from your own iris, there is a distinct feel of techno paranoia akin to sci-fi horror stories like The Machine Stops, muting the human element from exchange. If this seems dramatic, Social Formations describes the critical inquiry view that: Technology is still usually regarded today as either more or less neutral, incapable of playing any significant role in original creation or cultural life at large; or alternatively as vicious, inhuman and destructive of civilization. Social Formations of Global Media Art, Jos-Carlos Maritegui, Sean Cubitt & Gunalan Nadarajan (2009)

So, do we use technology or does technology shape our thoughts? I believe both is true, but neither is a reason to reject art that is made as a consequence. Technology clearly encourages new thought processes and ways of thinking that creates an entirely new perspective on making. I see Digital Art as symptomatic of a systems consciousness (Burnham, 1968, p.369) in a world where every user both is and interacts with a web made of connections between pieces of data. If the aforementioned "presence of mental images (Virilio, 1991, p.114) is one that we are living with, Digital Art addresses it more than any other medium. While relational aesthetics already addressed ...works that take the changing mental space opened by the Internet as its departure (Bourriaud, 2002, p.113), a better paradigm than this or postmodernism for Digital and Post-Digital art could be reached. It may be that the current paradigms, although capable of revealing interesting aspects of Digital Art, are simply not relevant to address Digital Art in the way that it deserves to be received. Rucker writes: The concept of information currently resists any really precise definition. Relative to information we are in a condition something like the condition of the 17th century scientists regarding energy. We know there is an important concept here, a concept

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with many manifestations, but we do not yet know how to talk about it in exactly the right way. (Rucker, 1987, p.27) I hope that Digital Art can become a recognized mediator between global use of technology and the people who use it. In the words of Popper, it could express the subjective experience of being immersed in data (Manovich, 2002, p.15) and even play an ethical role in the present development of globalisation by stressing human factors more than any other previous art form . (Popper, 2007,p.3) This is what I hope Post Digital Art can address, moving towards art which is not just about technology, but about the effect it has on people. I think it is important, however, to take note of Gumbrecht s point on the reawakened desire for presence (2004, XV). While Sherry Turkle may describe us as cheap dates when it comes to technology, I think the art world and society in general is right to deeply question whether digital media becomes a substitute for presence, or a new mediator of it. (Turkle, 2011) I do not believe that we should shy away from the challenge of incorporating the possibly scary possibility that the online and digital worlds will only increase to play a part in our lives and that we must deal with the consequences; political, environmental and psychological. John Hill from Lucky/PDF says that artists that aren t trying to deal with the implications of new media on society aren t making relevant work. (Hill, 2012) Similarly, Levin thinks that artists are obliged to really explore the expressive potential of the new tools that we have (Levin, 2009) and stresses that there s still a lack of understanding about what it could mean to be an artist who uses the materials of their own day. (ibid) The difference between digital media and traditional materials is that it is still in transition. We are not yet sure of the possibilities that it may open us up to, and it will require experimentation to find out what they are. Digital (and Post Digital) Art should not be heralded for its novelty in any sense, rather it should be accepted as a valid contributor to the story of art history, both in terms of medium and concept. I believe that it will in time, simply because of the clear shift in interests between the current art critics and my own generation. The conflict discussed here will only be resolved when art accepts that which is happening everywhere else, for better or worse.

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Figure 1: Floccus, Golan Levin [online] Available at: <http://www.flickr.com/photos/golanlevin/sets/72157594387499487/> [Accessed 08 February 2012] Figure 2: In Free Fall, Hito Steyerl [online] Available at: <http://www.timeout.com/london/art/event/41050/hito-steyerl> [Accessed 08 February 2012] Figure 3: Every Icon, John Simon [online] Available at: <http://artport.whitney.org/exhibitions/biennial2000/simon.shtml> [Accessed 08 February 2012]

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