Identity and the Web

The WWW provides a new platform for discovery. It can be discovery of ourselves as artists, as citizens, as thinkers, as poets. We can be whatever we want to be. There is tremendous power in this illusion. But is it illusion? As we mirror ourselves in new identities, a transformation enters into the process as we become what we project. We are what we edit. We are what we process.

At first, the principal content defining us on the Internet was text-based, language intent on informing. Blogging moved informing into the realm of identity and discovery, in creating in the constancy of change. Then content added image, then sound, and finally video. Each of these content areas became an arena for self discovery. This extension of media invited new ways of defining self. Look at this video in which the creator is not a drummer nor a pianist:

The fantasy world created through sound and image exists only as a moment of self expression and inquiry, a discovery that takes the creator to a new place through the process of creation and through the Internet witnesses that somehow stumble upon this vivid imagination. It is not an intellectual act, but rather a visceral, intuitive exploration filled with humor, self-awareness, and a sense of spontaneity. None of this happens in real time, but is achieved through assembling stop action photography with precise timing geared to the music track.

Another sound and image inquiry through the Internet takes on the quality of a musical journal. James Blunt creates a fantasy of himself. It’s appearance on YouTube seems like a confessional and a revelation. The simple unpretentious quality of his singing, his turning around, walking toward toward the viewer (it could be me or you), and removing the hood so he can share this intimacy is a confessional to himself and anyone else who might be passing by. The metaphor is extended through his stripping down, baring himself to the world as he shares his fantasy. He faces the realization of his disappointment that he will never be with someone so beautiful.

It is a brief, poignant moment that takes on the air of sincerity. He reveals his excitement when he switches from an almost impersonal narrative and exclaims directly to his fantasy “You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful! You’re beautiful, it’s true!” We are touched by his wish to share such an intimate moment (which is of course, extremely public). The public nature of this intimacy leads to Kevin Sage’s parody below.

Sage’s parody attempts to fool us by seeming so strikingly like the original, but drawing upon cliches and gay phobia to distort the sincerity and shared intimacy of the original. We know it’s an act, even when imitating the naturalness of Blunt, and this ironic realization is reinforced by his apparent leap off of a building into the bowels of the metropolis instead of the deep blue sea of the original.

Yet another parody emerges: “Bloody Cold” from piderman. Parody is a powerful way of establishing and diverting identity. Now the character is no longer a romantic, unpretentious distant lover. Instead he is everyman, out of character and out of place, trapped in someone else’s fantasy.

Parody becomes a form of public inquiry. This becomes social inquiry and reveals the stereotypes that often populate the narratives of our fantasies. The use of all media to conduct this inquiry now insures and wider dialogue and a richer process.

One cannot leave this sequence of responses without looking at the images created to be just the fantasy without the fantisizer, the famous Angelina Jolie — You’re Beautiful.

Here the narrator is only present as a disembodied figure reflecting on a fantasy, celebrating the stereotype of the American Beauty. The repeated iterations of the song in changing contexts makes the song become a parody of itself. Even though it is the same song, the repetitions with changing context remove the innocence of the earlier “reality.” Illusion dissolves into disillusionment and parody becomes caricature. This does not lessen its importance nor its impact but illustrates how distortion adds to and changes meaning.

Such imitative work and parody requires a deep assimilation of the original far beyond the textual meaning. Gestures, expressions, and props must be assimilated and synthesized at a profound level. In the 16th Century, the “Parody Mass” generated new musical expression by borrowing materials from an earlier work. It has been noted that this term might be better translated as “imitation mass”—but even that term fails to acknowledge that a new work emerges from the ashes of the old.

In these works, artists collaborate with the Internet. The Internet becomes a mirror for reflection and discovery. As the works are published, works generate responses, an emerging collaborative process that accelerates as artists transform old materials into new manifestations. Collaboration invites works to become more public, encouraging extension of ideas and materials. Identity, once a private persona presented to the world, is now an ever-changing public presence.

PLEXUS: An Endless Voyage of Collaboration

PLEXUS is a group of artists who began collaborating in the late 1970s and whose endless artistic voyage continues even now. In 1982, these artists formed PLEXUS, Much of their work was conceptual, evolutionary, and revolutionary, as artists extended themselves into furture renderings of work that was ongoing as dynamic, changing entities.

A historical synopsis can be found on the Internet at Plexus Forum which provides a chronology of events from 1992 to the present time. But the details and the spirit of these dynamic happenings recede into the background, waiting to be restored.

On the website of ISALTA, a recent news release promises to bring these years to life through a new book by Sandro Dernini:

I am pleased to inform you that today, on the 25th anniversary of Plexus (born on June 13 of 1982 in New York), finally I signed a contract with the Academic Press of the University of Rome “La Sapienza” to have published the book Plexus Black Box, A Multicultural Aesthetic Inquiry into an International Community Based Art Project. In the attachment there is the book cover made by Micaela Serino that I really thank for her continuing support in all these years in Rome.
The book will be out at the end of July. It will cost 23 euros and it will be possible to order it directly online from the University of Rome Academic Press.
More info will be posted on www.plexusforum.net.
Artlove, the voyage continues…
Plexus23s
Sandro Dernini

This is good news indeed. It is time that the chronicles of this remarkable arts collaborative project spanning more than two decades are brought into perspective.

I am thinking of one such excursion in which the hallowed halls of academia at New York University were literally transformed into an oasis of contemporary artsmaking, unfolding as a dynamic happening, a continuation of a project called The Serpent.

The Scene: November 11, 1988, New York, Bobst Library of New York University. The Snow Room. Il Viaggio del Serpente, second act of The Serpent, performances by Dinu Ghezzo, Sandro Dernini, Miguel Algarin, Arturo Lindsay, Stephen DiLauro, George Chaikin, Lynne Kanter. It featured an Italian art group show by Marina Cappelletto, Antonia Carmi, Franco Ciarlo, Dionigi Cossu, Ivan Dalla Casa, Baldo Diodato, Cosino Di Leo Ricatto, Roberto Fabricciani, Manuela Filiaci, Dinu Ghezzo, Andrea Grassi, Gianfranco Mantegna, Renato Miceli, Beatrice Muzi, Luca Pizzorno, Renzo Ricchi, Elisabetta Zanelli.

Walking into the space was like undergoing a transformation. A parade of the serpent had begun earlier in the Village and ended on the 12th floor of Bobst, much to the bewilderment of security and the library staff. Suddenly a space that is dedicated to the preservation of past achievements was the locus of activity for the creation of new works. Exhibits and artifacts were scattered throughout the space like a garden of new artistic conceptual works unfolding as the evening progressed. Dinu Ghezzo composed a short work. A violinist performed it on the telephone to a location in Italy where a computer processed the music as a parchment of visual art which was immediately FAXED back to the library where it was installed on the library wall. None of this was linear. These were multitextural utterances, overlapping Time and Space, so that the distinctions were blurred and intermingling.

In these pre-WWW days, the spirit of PLEXUS anticipated the new technology and formed the process that would later be replicated almost effortlessly on the Internet. The 12th floor of Bobst momentarily shimmered like a new work of art emerging from the staid confines of the endless stacks on levels below. The evening was one of music, dance, and artworks forming a splendor of artists connected to the moment.

That moment has faded into the past, and The Snow Room has been recaptured by Academia. If their ears and minds were so attuned, those occupying the space now might hear the resonance of the past filtering through… an endless Voyage of Plexus, still crossing new frontiers of imagination, still intent on reconciling cultures.

ISALTA.com Still a Web 1.0 Site?

ISALTA (International Society for the Advancement of Living Traditions in Art) is an enigma. It is essentially a Moodle Wiki in structure, but appears to be conceived as a Web 1.0 site with interactive participation somewhat limited. Perhaps its origin in the pre-web days in the 1980s is part of the reason. Most of the members are of an era when the emerging web was aimed at web surfers who were essentially consumers. Web authors created information to be read and understood essentially in a text-based context. As images and sound were added, it was largely in a supportive role, controlled by the authors to be consumed by a browsing public.

Visiting ISALTA, I am struck by the lack of participation of its members, but there is no atmosphere for creative input. It resembles a site under tight control rather than a true Wiki where members create knowledge. ISALTA still appears to operate as a site where knowledge is produced by a few to be consumed by its membership and a public that may accidentally Google the site. Although there is a means for commentary, comments are trivialized because they are relegated to the status of comments.

Maybe most of its membership is still stuck in a Web 1.0 mindset. I can’t think of a more appropriate area of concern for a creative, interactive Web 2.0 shared enterprise than living traditions in the arts. ISALTA needs a membership intent on defining and advancing its cause through the creation and sharing of new ideas and knowledge. ISALTA should become a platform for preserving living practices and creating new traditions.

ISALTA seems out of step in its depiction of technology today. On the one hand it regards technology as an enemy, pushing traditions to extinction:

Of special interest to the Society is the recognition and nurturance of artistic traditions at risk of extinction as a result of the impact of technology.

On the other hand, it suggests technology creates future traditions:

What requires examination is not only the processes by which the traditional arts are transformed, co-opted, corrupted and diminished or revitalized and enhanced by the impact of technology, but also the processes by which new traditions are being formed by technology. Photography, film, video, and holography immediately come to mind as examples.

(ISALTA Statement of Purpose)

It seems unfortunate that ISALTA maintains such a visual bias, ignoring one of the major contributions of new technologies in creating collaborative dynamics across all media.

ISALTA has a unique opportunity to restore phenomenology as a central process for arts inquiry and criticism. It could also engage in dialogic process, problematizing issues and creating narrative explorations. But even more importantly it needs to encourage the incorporation of media, of images, sounds, musics, videos, in a burgeoning creative atmosphere, where inquiry is an artsmaking qualitative process. Its members are essentially creators. Perhaps they are not engaged in ISALTA because its perceived stance does not really engage its members.

While it is at it, ISALTA might also change Art to Arts in a sweeping gesture of inclusion.