Week 9

Response to Lev Manovich reading:

Lev Manovich brings up some interesting ideas in this essay on new media in regards to the internet. Manovich first gives the idea of contemporary digital social media as being considered "Web 2.0". His idea of "Web 2.0" Manovich writes that what we are now seeing, because of web 2.0, is a much larger amount of people accessing content that is made by non professionals. He also describes web 2.0 in showing the statistics of people using social networking software.

What I found most interesting about this article was when Manovich described the shifts happening in human tactics and corporate strategies. He gives a really good example describing the two. Strategy would be a government designing a city plan and giving the streets different names, while tactics would be each individual human finding shortcuts in those streets, or finding the route that works best for them. Strategy is clothing designers making clothes for people to wear, while tactics is the human choosing how to mix and match those clothes. Manovich uses this idea and argues that tactics are now shaping strategy. Massive corporations such as Google and Facebook only exist because of the tactics of people and are only continuing to survive based on what the consumer wants. If the consumer wants what the massive corporation cannot provide, it is much easier and faster to receive that want from another source.

While this idea trend started happening in digital culture, we are now seeing it in a physical sense as well. Manovich addresses popular sneaker companies allowing the consumer to customize the sneaker they are buying. He also addresses that there are now markets for what used to be youth subcultures. 

He continues by writing about conversations through media and concludes his essay asking a pretty open-ended question: "Is Art after Web 2.0 Still Possible?" He quickly addresses that with all the money invested in the market of contemporary art, it is unlikely that it will ever collapse. I suppose I would have to agree with Manovich in that I really do not think that modernist art will ever be destroyed by any sort of technology. Something that I have been wanting to further research is the relationship between modern art and mass media culture. I hope to believe that modernist art is one of its own entity. Something that is outside of any sort of corporate controlled economy flow. I hope to believe that while looking for the source any industry, trend, technology, the source always ends up being a money hungry mega corporation, modernist art is at the opposite end of the spectrum. I think a question to ask is not "is art possible after web 2.0?" but "how will web 2.0 influence art?"

Response to Jason Evans reading:

In the reading done by Jason Evans, I was initially a bit surprised in his statement "I am underwhelmed by photography's presence online and the lack of innovative explorations of the new medium." He begins to back up his statement by addressing his creation of websites like TheDailyNice.com and a newer TheNewScent.com. He wrote about how it is only through the use of the internet that he is able to make the work that he wants to while reaching a newer and larger audiences. It is all very affordable also, he refers to the idea that he does not have to make any coffee table books. 

Evans continues by addressing how photographers today were brought up or educated in a way that makes the photograph more than the image but an object itself. "The prospect of all of those uncalibrated monitors is going to be a turn-off for any photographer who has labored with specific tools and palettes to produce particular effects." I dont necessarily think that what Evans is saying here is that all of photography should no longer be focused on the object, only the image, but that he is saying that one would expect there to be more focus on projects only about the image by now. 

We are very slowly starting to see web based art projects, many of which seem to be nothing more than experimentation into unknown territory. This internet and digital culture, in general, is foreign to us. We have entered into an age where physical attributes of an object are now a variable that an artist can choose or not choose to use. One reason to this slow process is because this seems to be one of the largest culture shifts since, quite possibly, the industrial revolution. Maybe we just expect things to happen much more quickly and easily now, the internet is certainly providing "quick-and-easiness" for everything else. What are we supposed to do here? Create websites that have no utilitarian function? Create odd or abstract gif images? Create online galleries? What does this mean? What is the purpose of presenting an art online as opposed to in the physical world? How can we use this new communication tool, this networking tool, this "thing" that only uses sight and sound? This is an incredibly exciting time. So much uncharted territory.

Response to Susan Murray reading:

The article written by Susan Murray is primarily focused on the website, Flickr, and how that has influenced amateur digital photography. I think that her main concern in what Flickr is doing to modern photographers is that it is making it much more difficult to distinguish the hobbyist, the serious-amateur, and the professional. She states "the amateur and professional become virtually indistinguishable in their interaction in the comments section". I don't understand why this idea of what Flickr is doing with amateur photography is really that relevant. Why are we concerned with the indistinguishability between amateur and professional on an amateur photo sharing site? Its a general assumption that anyone can upload a photo to Flickr in less than 10 seconds. Anything that is that easy has very little to no credibility. My question is why are professionals even concerned with Flickr at all?