Julian Stallabrass – Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art

For class Wednesday, read “Uses and prices of art” (chapter 4) – in Julian Stallabrass – Art Incorporated: The Story of Contemporary Art and respond below.

Free market fail: Pay-to-play groups ripping off artists?

Here is an unsolicited email I received this week from someone who “likes” my work and wants me to submit to her art publication. By “submit” she means send images of my artwork for the International Contemporary Masters to consider for inclusion. Upon further research I have found her organization is in the business of charging artists into submission. How much you ask? Try nearly $1000 for a single page. Have plenty of money laying around? You can purchase six pages for almost $3500, or the front cover for $9800!!! Here’s the email:

From: 	 ornella@omma.us
Subject: International Contemporary Masters Volume 6
Date: 	 October 5, 2011 3:09:52 PM EDT

Dear Owen

I visited your portfolio and I liked your work, so I would like
to invite you to submit art for inclusion in Volume VI of
"International Contemporary Masters”, a leading juried annual art
publication presenting noteworthy artists from all over the world.

Please note that this is not a free inclusion and we encourage
artists to seek sponsors. 

If you are interested I will send you more information or you can
visit the link: http://wwab.us/index.php/Masters-Application/
To get an idea of the quality of our publications you can view our
previous books at the link above.

With Best Regards

Ornella Martin - Assistant Curator
World Wide Art Books,INC
1907 State Street
93101 Santa Barbara CA
Tel / fax +1 805 845 3869

www.wwab.us

World Wide Art Books was established in 1997 and has to date pub-
lished and represented over 6,000 artists from all over the world.

Unfortunately this kind of “pay-to-play” scenario is not unusual in the art world. The more my name gets out there the more contacts I receive asking me to pay money to be included in a publication, exhibition, or other so-called opportunity.

The illusion of “making it” as a visual artist today is not unlike the often unrealistic goals shared by young musicians. And, like the music business, the economically disparate art world reflects the failures of free market principles by rewarding only a few lucky or well-connected individuals and ignoring everyone else.

Elizabeth Warren’s critique of corporations and billionaires who believe they shouldn’t pay their fair share of taxes accurately critiques the focus on art stardom that pay-to-play organizations promote. There are thousands of artists, designers, and creators out there who exhibit their work publicly and contribute to the visual dialog. Like the industrialists who use publicly-funded roads to move their goods to market, the 1% of artists who reach international fame do so because they have been inspired by everyone else that came before them. Everyone else that is, who are targeted by rhetoric such as this from the World Wide Art Books website:

An invaluable tool for every artist who wants to help himself or herself to succeed, to get the best value for his or her art, to establish relationships with art galleries, and also as a reference for clients.

Every artist knows how important it is to be included in juried exhibitions, festivals, books and publications. To create an important record that will open a path to success and also to show his or her creations in every possible way and to get one’s art out of the studio and before the public eye.

I like to think that artists are more savvy than to fall prey to this marketing-speak. I also like to think they are inspired to respond to the world for reasons beyond getting “the best value” for their art. Sadly, the truth is there is little support in the United States for the cultural, social, and aesthetic contributions artists make, so many find themselves taking risks like this in order to get their work seen. Other risks include applying to shows that charge entry fees and provide no shipping expenses (to or from) or insurance. See this post with details about entry fees for artists: What it costs to be an artist.

In this post-Jesse Helms era, the echo of his “letting the market decide” tirade has only made matters worse. Artists have reduced themselves to craft production, creating unique, one-off works, with the hope of selling them to collectors. Instead of reflecting and affecting society, the market has given us a numb and spectacle-driven object factory akin more to stamp collecting than a valid mode of cultural production.

In his short book, Behind the Times: The Decline and Fall of the Twentieth-Century Avant-Gardes, Eric Hobsbawm points to the greater problem of a “collectable” art practice—that it suffers from lack of reproducibility, relevance to those outside of the art world, and actually obscures real political realities.

Hobsbawm says that, unlike film or literature, “an ideal work of art is deemed to be completely uncopiable, since its uniqueness is authenticated by signature and provenance.” Citing Benjamin’s famous “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” he says this “spiritualization” of the object conflicts with the ability to reproduce a work for as many patrons as possible and throws art into a technological obsolescence. (Hobsbawm, 16) Put another way, 99% of the public doesn’t encounter art because it is regulated to museums and private collections.

Also, unlike movies or books, due to better technological methods for making images (namely photography) painting and other media have “abandoned the traditional language of representation” making it practically incomprehensible to a general public without an art historical training. (Hobsbawm, 24)

Finally, Hobsbawm argues that art has rendered itself impotent in terms of it’s impact by willfully turned its back on society. Unlike, film which had to communicate with a mass market or face economic failure, art has sought some grander idea that is intentionally exclusive of the masses. It pretends to critique society but rarely does it communicate anything at all to most of them because it has been regulated physically and philosophically to an irrelevant niche.

 

What it costs to be an artist

Ever wonder it costs to be a visual artist? In addition to materials, travel, shipping, and living expenses, the cost of participation can become very expensive. Check out this graph displaying cost of entries fees from 62 art “opportunities” for emerging artists surveyed this month by graduate students in visual arts at Florida State University.

Something interesting to note; the most popular fees are $0, $25, $35, and $40. Also, 65% of opportunities make artists support the exhibition by requiring a fee to participate. Pay to play anyone?

The geographic location of opportunities…

PHP Machine

Our use of the internet is increasingly enhanced by online applications that reenact offline scenarios; sharing a video or photographs with friends, doing research by looking-up terms, keeping a log of your activities. The interaction is not new, only the context.

In this project you will be challenged to recreate a modest online app that mimics a real-world machine or activity. Create a web page or series of pages that mimics the function (or disfunction) of a machine either explicitly or through the use of metaphor. The machine you choose can be as simple or as complex as you like, but should be able to receive input, capable of acting on that input, and showing output or action. The more extraordinary the result the better. You will be graded on form AND function.

PHP Machine: Concept

Create an HTML page (linked from your profile page) containing the following information:

1. Select your machine (or multiple if you like)
1. Research its history. What can you use about past context(s) to influence your project?
2. Find related imagery. Seriously, visit a library if you have to.
3. Be ready to report your object(s) in class
2. Create a step-by-step drawing of the processes of your machine mash-up
1. Make notes about design, interface, code, etc.
2. Present your drawing and research in class

1. At least three sketches (pencil/photoshop) of machine drawings

1. Notes and research about the machine you have chosen for the PHP Machine Assignment

PHP Machine: Prototype

At this point you should have a functioning prototype of your PHP Machine. Create an HTML page (linked from your profile page) containing the following information:

1. A link to the original concept
2. A link to a functioning prototype or separate parts of PHP Machine
3. Images of preliminary designs for the interface to the PHP Machine
4. Other notes and research about your project

FINAL: Present Your Machine 

The project should:

1. Use one or more PHP pages as well as web forms that allow users to input data or make selections.
2. Your page should be elegant and well-considered in its layout. Use images and CSS to define and position type and form elements.
3. Your page(s) can be as creative as you like. The design and images you use should be related to the concept of your artwork.

1. Examples
1. Historical examples and archives of machines
1. The IBM Archive Inspiring machines from the history of the IBM
2. Wired.com search for “machines”
2. Formal disfunction

1. Glitches
1. 404, asdfg (careful), and wwwwwwwww by jodi.org
2. Form Art by Alexei Shulgin
3. Choose
4. Going down (2002) by Claude Closky
5. scrollbar (2002) by Jan Robert Leegte
6. untitled scroll #2 (2007) by Chris Collins
7. Scrollbars (2009) by Andrey Yazev
2. Viruses
1. Text Squeezer, Misspeller by John Maeda
2. degenerative by Eugenio Tisselli
3. Generation Loss by hadto
3. Bots and automation
1. theBot (Shockwave plugin required) by Amy Alexander
2. Shredder by Mark Napier
3. Eliza
4. doctor Emacs Terminal psychotherapist
5. Carnivore by R-S-G
6. Electronic Disturbance Theater

1. Physical machines
1. Life Writer by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau
2. Dupage and Department of Rhythmanalysis: On Location by Kevin Hamilton
3. Jean Tinguely and the Tinguely Museum
4. Alan Storey
5. Arthur Ganson (TED lecture)
6. Theo Jansen
7. Hornmassive and Solar Oralizer by Matt Hope
8. Rechnender Raum by Ralf Baecker
2. Functional online applications
1. Translators

1. 5.13 24.11 13.16 9.13.5 5.13 24.11 (Shakespeare encoded by Nabokov: 5=T), “Speak Memory”, Nabokov’s autobiography
2. The new season of the BBC show the IT Crowd has L33T subtitles
1. Generator
1. Artist Statement Generator
2. Ebay Feedback Generator

1. Visualizations and aesthetic representations

1. Money Counter by John Maeda
2. Eternal Sunset
3. String Art Generator by Alexander Henken
4. wordle.net
5. Many Eyes
6. Google Timeline
1. Social networking
1. I’m a Designer And…
2. Anycast Thought Stream
3. twitter.com
4. 00pd.com by Patrick Davison with Twitter API
5. suicidemachine.org
2. Tools
1. Freedom
2. http://www.seeclickfix.com/tallahassee
3. Stickyscreen
4. Right Now, What Are You Doing?
5. Internet censorship in China: greatfirewallofchina.org and Website test
6. Crash IE
7. How Much is Inside a Sandwich?
8. Favicon Maker and Pixel Maker by Shahee Ilyas
9. Weather for Your Wear by Jenni Morano
10. Daytum
11. CSS Killswitch
12. See Who’s Editing Wikipedia – Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
3. Conceptual and one-offs
1. Subservient Chicken
2. SurvivaBall by The Yes Men
3. Augmented Reality Smart Grid and Threadless proposition
4. Donald Judd or Cheap Furniture
1. Examples by Owen Mundy
1. Keyword Intervention
2. You Never Close Your Eyes Anymore
3. Automata

James Enos presents Excavating Citizenship

Excavating Citizenship – Lessons from the edge of centristic narratives…

The “work” is meant to provoke political dialogues exposing the structure and composition of social-space as it is mediated by technocracy and resultant physical infrastructures. Much of the effort here lies in participating w/ collective resources and performing pedagogical undertakings that are willing to reframe the prescriptive
constitution of existing cartographies as well as their governing power structures e.g. historically clumsy patterns of land-use, developmental logics, and stale entitlements held afloat tangentially to such newly forming urban-mythologies throughout North America. Additionally, we are laboring to develop appropriate modes of representation and the rhetoric capable of scaffolding multiple voices from often discrete and polemic referents- civility, subjectivity, history, memory, and so on… The intent is to cultivate an understanding of urban centers and our everyday acts of citizenship w/in them; as non-isotropic, non-Euclidean relational spaces where inherently public and counter-public flows are privileged didactically over enumerations or configurations of absolute positions. Consequently, our subject matter addresses the fluidity of transnational human geography and the late capital spatial subjection of radical local effects, which precipitously yields repetitive cultural crisis. All in all, the images, objects, issues, and architectures labor to awake urgency to reform, abandon, or to cooperatively author contemporary institutions with definitive terms of non-aggression… To participate in the construction of our own environment this time, and to absorb the latent potential w/in methodologies informed by conceptual and interdisciplinary post-structuralist spatial practices.

Bio:

James Enos is an artist and researcher, formally trained as an architect with a background in computer information systems and manufacturing. His projects are rigorously interdisciplinary; beyond cultural production, the work can be read as quantifiable research within numerous theoretical discourses. The locus of his works traverses the production of theoretical texts, stunningly complex models, and program-generated imagery. While confronting the problematics of quantification, Enos’ work attempts to digest and spatialize the otherwise invisible and enormously complex relationship between subjectivity and the logistical footprint of supply / demand flows. Primarily interrogating the built environment of North American cities, Enos articulates a poignant critique of consumer /client culture and its spatial fallout, and makes a refreshingly critical contribution to a history of theoretical debate on utopianism in architecture. – Charles G. Miller 08’

Social engagement through games

Here are two great interactive projects each with a pedagogical twist. Both combine the pleasure of gaming with a narrative that is relevant and immediate.

In People’s Pie, you control the budget of the federal government. You choose how federal revenues should be raised and how taxpayers’ money should be spent. You must decide how to fund programs that are important to you, without setting taxes too high or borrowing too much money.

Phone Story is a game for smartphone devices that attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform. Under the shiny surface of our electronic gadgets, behind its polished interface, hides the product of a troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe.

Sylvie Fortin, Art Papers Editor

Good interview with Art Papers Editor, Sylvie Fortin, about the magazine and perspectives from a non-art center.

Web2 class notes

Here are some things we looked at in today’s Web2 class for your reference later.

Arthur Ganson makes beautiful machines

Processing.js makes your data visualizations, digital art, interactive animations, educational graphs, video games, etc. work using web standards and without any plug-ins.

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions.

You can see a sample of some of the best work created using Processing in the Exhibition.

The Creators is an interactive, audio-reactive multitouch installation

CONTINUUM is a concept for a web-based fashion label in which designs are user-generated using custom software and made to order to your personal measurements.

My little piece of Privacy by Niklas Roy

FSU Department of Art Visiting Artist Lecture Series, Fall 2011

The Case Against Art Show Entry Fees

Here is an interesting article about fees for entry; “The Case Against Art Show Entry Fees,” feel free to respond with comments.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-grant/the-case-against-art-show_b_708624.html