Of course art has always had to interface with commercial culture, but
"the harsh realities of the commercial world" is not the point.
If you're an artist, you belong to a tradition that is older than Google
by at least forty thousand years.
Living and working with this in mind is what's most important, keeping
this on the monitors of the neurotic neo-liberal world.
-Joel
On 8/1/2014 5:20 AM, marc garrett wrote:
Hi Shardcore and all,
I’ve noticed many critical responses whether discussing with friends,
associates, or reading material about it online.
I have copied and pasted some comments below from the ‘Hack The Art
World’, site.
“I can't say I was all that bothered by the daft "DevArt" neologism.
Nor Google's unsubtle rewrite of digital art history. It was badly
researched, short-sighted, and a touch imperialistic, yes, but
ultimately it only made them look stupid, not anyone else.
I was, however, a little creeped out by the DevArt competition. Their
open call to the community. To me it just appeared to be a cynical
corporate attempt to hoover up a load of grassroots enthusiasm and
creativity and take ownership of it, for the benefit of no-one except
a multinational's competitive advantage.
Google's "opportunity" was, if we are to believe their blurb, intended
to "inspire" the artists of tomorrow. The opportunity was to compete
for a single commission, using tools Google wished to promote, and to
surrender all rights to any submitted work - whether commissioned or not.
This may well reflect the harsh realities of the commercial world, but
if the aim was to inspire, this was a terrible way to go about it.
IMHO, one inspires by giving a sense of possibility, not limits. By
giving a sense of freedom, not constraint. By giving the experience of
achievement, not disappointment. The DevArt "opportunity" was not a
chance for the world to hear your voice, it was an invitation to queue
for the XFactor auditions. It was a doorstep on which to dump your
best ideas in the hope a rich benefactor might take one in and give it
a home.” Matt Pearson.
——————
“Just wanted to lend my support to this, which I think is a creative
response to the DR show. I was immediately galled by Google's
arrogance when they put the statement out. My initial reaction quickly
evolved into complete dismissal. Incursions into cultural discourse by
clumsy corporate actors are probably best ignored. The term itself is
a laughable articulation.
Having said that, I think the art community should be suspicious about
a 'sponsor' as powerful as this making moves into the art sector. The
GOOG have a track record of challenging, even dismantling (aka
'disrupting') cultural institutions - just ask the world's libraries.
So I guess there are serious undertones here.” Anil Bawa-Cavia.
——————
“When I wrote about the exhibition for the Guardian (a preview piece -
the show hadn't opened yet) I wanted to be careful not to disparage
the work of those involved, but instead to highlight my discomfort
with Google's involvement (given some of the responses, I may have
been too subtle about this...). I also wanted to separate my personal
feelings about Google from my feelings about what institutions should
be supporting in artistic practice, and what I felt was a failure not
by Google (who do what big corps do) and not by the artists (who need
to make work and get by), but by the Barbican for allowing this to
happen in their name.
This I feel is the main problem: massive corporations are going to
massively incorporate, artists are going to make work, and sometimes
they are going to do it in difficult, questioning circumstances.
Institutions should exist to facilitate work but not direct it. Far
more ethically dubious partnerships (Bloomberg, BP) are common in the
art world, but they don't dictate the form of the work, or try to
write art history. It's at this point that the Barbican should have
stepped in and reined Google in a bit: they're a sponsor, not a curator.
My fear is that this failure of nerve on the part of the Barbican (and
I hope it was that, and not sheer ignorance) is part of a wider
failure of nerve on the part of institutions dealing with technology
and tech/art, giving up curatorial confidence and simply handing it
over to entities with their own agenda who they feel know more about
this area. It's a worrying precedent.” James Bridle.
To read the rest of these comments and more about ‘Hack The Art World’
— visit here http://hacktheartworld.com/discus.html#comment-1495932506
And, here is the front end for http://hacktheartworld.com/
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*waves*
i'm in this, along with a few others, it's been organised by Jan
Vantomme. It's getting a surprising amount of press (WSJ, New
Scientist, Wired etc) which is good.
Having just been to DigitalRevolution this week, I can say we need to
be making more noise than ever - it's a show full of 'interactive
entertainment' masquerading as art. Some of it's good, but there's a
hell of a lot that feels like 'tech demos'
On 1 Aug 2014, at 09:48, marc garrett wrote:
Artists virtually gatecrash Google's DevArt Barbican exhibit
By Katie Collins.
A collective of coders and artists who go by the name Hack the
Artworld have gatecrashed the Google-sponsored DevArt exhibition
currently taking place at the Barbican in London.
The artists have uploaded their own digital artworks to a website
and have placed location markers within the DevArt exhibition itself
-- digitally fencing it off, so that only visitors to the Barbican
can access the artworks on their smartphones or tablets.
The DevArt exhibition is meant to be an exploration of art that has
been made with code, but it has not chimed well with everyone
involved in the digital arts community, many of whom have been
displeased by various elements of Google's efforts. On the Hack the
Artworld website the artists have published an open letter addressed
to Larry Page and Sergey Brin laying out their objections in full.
Wired - http://bit.ly/1mDOZw1
--
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