Extended essay by: Richard Krantz Dept.: Glasgow School of Art / BA. Fine Art / Sculpture & Environmental Art Year: 2013 FoCI Tutor: Grainne Rice Word count: 5116
Synopsis This essay examines aspects of Internet culture and Internet humour as cultural phenomena, it critically discusses how artists have made this a subject in their work, and in what way it influences how art is being created today. It looks at specific examples of online content such as Internet memes, LOLcats, trolling, social media and games and exemplify, in the work of Ai Weiwei, 100101110101101.org, Rachel Maclean and Max Ronnersjö, how artists use these as subjects for art and sites for art. It also looks upon Internet art, a medium that the essay argues was glorified and utopian in the 1990s, and today is very different from what it was back then. It argues that the growing accessibility of the Internet, social media, online communities and the Internet culture of the 2010s has changed Internet art profoundly. It draws upon the philosophical inquiry The Internet (1999) by Gordon Graham describing a “technophilia” amongst early Internet enthusiasts – the essay further argues that net art pioneers were more interested in the structure of the Internet than those of today. The essay concludes by considering given examples, that the Internet is a quickly changing environment which is almost impossible to write about in a critical way, without being out dated when saving the word file.
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Contents page
[Cover Page] Synopsis: 1 Contents page: 2 List of illustrations: 3-4 Introduction: 5-6 Section 1: Internet art then and now – “Net Art 2.0” ?: 6-10 Section 2: Going viral – Internet memes, cats – and art: 10-15 Section 3: Trolling outside and within the art world: 15-18 Conclusion and summary: 18-20 Bibliography: 21-25
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List of illustrations Cover image illustration: Meme created by author, using the free online tool http://builder.cheezburger.com/builder/ . (13/09/13)
Fig. 1: The LOLcat “Happy Cat”, with caption, created by the net community on Something Awful (http://www.somethingawful.com), 2003. Image obtained from the database Know Your Meme at http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/100/128/happycat.gif (10/09/13)
Fig. 2: Print screen by author of the front page of the art work (including author's browser window) “http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org”, by Jodi.org, 1995. Image obtained from the actual art work at http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org (22/10/13)
Fig. 3: Photo of the work “Fly Tweet”, by David Bowen, 2012. Image obtained from David Bowen's official website. URL: http://www.dwbowen.com/fly_tweet(full).jpeg (23/10/13) Fig. 4: Still from the work “LolCats” by Rachel McLean, 2012, Image obtained from Rachel McLean's official website at http://www.rachelmaclean.com/Images/Lolcats%20Stills %20NEW/Sequence-1-01053412.jpg (08/10/13) Fig. 5: Meme by artist Max Ronnersjö, 2012, image obtained from the artist's tumblr page at http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4g3tw82T01qbnhj8o1_1280.jpg (08/10/13) Fig. 6: Remix of the “I can has cheezburger?”-meme, posted on Know Your Meme, 2011. Image obtained from http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/masonry/000/041/222/cheezburger-cat.jpg (30/10/13). Fig. 7: Epic fail LOLcat meme, anonymous author. First posted on 4chan. Image obtained from Eva and Franco Mattes' website at http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/catt/meme-epicfail.jpg. (13/09/13) 3
Fig. 8: Installation shot of the work “Catt”, Eva and Franco Mattes, 2010. Image obtained from Eva and Franco Matte's website at http://www.0100101110101101.org/home/catt/exhibition-texas.jpg (13/09/13) Fig. 9: Meme version of the work “Catt”, 2010. Image obtained from Eva and Franco Mattes' website at: http://0100101110101101.org/home/catt/meme-letmein.jpg (13/09/13) Fig 10: Screen shot by author of the work “Max Payne CHEATS ONLY”, Jodi.org, 2006. Image obtained from: http://maxpaynecheatsonly.jodi.org/ (30/10/13).
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Introduction Internet memes, LOLcats, trollings and Grumpy Cat. The different terms are many, hard to grasp, and riddled when discussing Internet culture in general and Internet humour in particular, however it seems like something that the Internet users of today are getting more and more used to – when scrolling through their Facebook- and Twitter feeds.
Fig. 1: The LOLcat “Happy Cat” with caption, created by Something Awful, 2003.
In this essay I aim to dissect and discuss Internet culture in relation to contemporary fine art, both physical- and Internet art. Does Internet culture feed into physical- and Internet art, and if it does – how? Has Internet humour changed Internet art in any direction, or are they two opposing poles on the same planet not affecting each other? Twitter, Facebook and social media in general is a big part of social interaction in 2013. In what ways do artists use these mediums to create art? Is it simply a storage space, a way of archiving or something much, much bigger? What roles do digital curated image banks, such as tumblr and imgur play in all of this? The clash between online entertainment content (if that is how you chose to view Internet memes and Youtube videos) and contemporary Fine Art practice is interesting as it could be seen as a clash between low- and high culture. The art world seems to be quite receptive of the world of online culture – for example Walker Art Center has hosted two annual Internet Cat Video Film 5
Festivals (Aaron Sherman: 2013). Is doing this blurring the lines between high- and low culture? Net artist Rafaël Rozendaal does not think so. In a blog entry from 2012 he expresses that he thinks the opposite is happening - “Popular culture is cheap. You can get it for free or a small amount of money. High culture is expensive. Prices of artworks are higher than ever.” (Rafaël Rozendaal: 2012). In the first section of this essay I will discuss how Internet Art has changed over the years, in relation to contemporary online culture of 2013. Section 1: Internet art then and now – “Net Art 2.0” ? Internet based art work has been around since the early 1990s, before the Internet began to gain mass exposure. Many of the early “net art pioneers” used HTML, hacking and tweaking of technology to create art online. Two of the most influential artists must be considered to be the duo
Fig. 2: Screen shot by author of the work
http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, Jodi.org, 1995
Jodi.org, consisting of Joaan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans. In the 2004 book Internet Art by Rachel Greene, the pair are described as “among the first to venture fully into technological abstraction” (Rachel Greene: 2004: 40). One of their earliest work from 1995, the site located on http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org, is by first glance a mad interactive adventure, consisting of numbers and letters (and HTML) on top of each other forming abstract patterns. There are numerous links embedded in the abstract pattern and many different things to find, but this is not all. Hidden in the source code of the work, which can be viewed by right-clicking on the site and selecting “view source”, are, amongst other things, instructions how to build a hydrogen bomb. According to Greene, this is “playful and riddling” and “a means of separating instructions
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(the HTML) from the completed task (the front page)” (Rachel Greene: 2004:40). I see it as a way of turning the code inside out – the source code is what is aesthetically pleasing in the work, and the work you see when visiting the site looks more like a source code usually looks like. More than anything though, it is according to me, questioning the structures of the Internet, coding and HTML. Other early Internet artists worked with the same concept, like Olia Lialina's and Michaël Samyn's website work Heaven&Hell from 1997. The collaborative project worked, according to the site, like this: ”Olia puts a page on a Russian server with a link to a page that doesn't exist yet on the Belgian server (hell). Then Michaël makes that page and includes a link to a non-existent page in heaven. Etcetera.” (Olia Lialina and Michaël Samyn: 1997).
Even projects made in the early 2000s seem to touch upon this subject as well. The work “THRUTH” by Jonas Downey, made in 2003, is a site that encrypts the word truth using different kinds of advanced coding techniques and turn it into short poems, or, in some cases – even a colour (Jonas Downey: 2003). Where does this urge, to tweak, twist and hack technology come from? I would argue it is a concept, or a way of working, that existed before the Internet and Internet art. Nam June Paik (born 1932) is one of the first to modify technology and turn it into art. His work Magnet TV from 1965 is probably one of the most famous examples. It is a fairly modest piece, consisting of a large magnet placed upon a consumer television transforming the signal into an abstract pattern. In my opinion, there is no difference in the concept of altering the HTML-code of a website as Jodi.org does, to altering the broadcast signal of a television as Nam June Paik. Both are questioning “new” technology and the structures within them. In an article by Maura Judkis, published in the Washington Post, it is described how Nam June Paik was thinking of how broadcast technology would work in the future, and that he once suggested that all of us would have our own TV channel (Maura Judkis: 2012). Nam June Paik passed away in 2006, a year after YouTube was founded. The site is however, in 2013, more popular than ever with 100 hours of video uploaded to the site every minute. (Youtube Statistics: 2013). But what about Internet art today, almost 20 years after Jodi.org's first piece? At a seminar organized by IASPIS in Stockholm in late 2009 the discussion topic was “Whatever happened to net art?”. In the press message for the conference it is suggested that early Internet Art was utopian and glorified in the mid 1990s, and that it today has “metamorphosed into something else” (IASPIS: 7
2009). In an interview in the online art magazine Konsten about the seminar, director of IASPIS Cecilia Widenheim suggests that a big part of Internet Art today is using social media as a platform, and gives examples of websites like Twitter, YouTube and Wiki-based sites. The interviewer describes it as a “net art 2.0” (Mattias Jansson: 2010). Even though I would argue against the use of a term as that, it is a fact that many Internet based artworks today partially or solemnly exist within the realms of social media. David Bowen's Fly Tweet from 2012 is a device consisting of a large transparent perspex sphere with a colony of house flies, along with a sensitive keyboard connected to an online twitter account. When a fly lands or touches a key on the board, that letter or number appears in the twitter-box, and when the maximum 140 character limit is reached, the tweet is sent. The sphere is exhibited in a conventional gallery, and the twitter account works as an online component. Both the parts are equally important, one could not exist without the other. At the time of writing this, the flies have made over 90000 tweets and 5825 users are following the account @flycolony (fly colony twitter account: 2013).
Fig 3: Photo of the work Fly Tweet, David Bowen, 2012
Aesthetically, Fly Tweet is clearly referencing Damien Hirtst's A Thousand Years from 1990, but that aside, the work is very humorous. I also consider the work to be questioning twitter, and our use of it, but compared to the two recent examples in http://wwwwwwwww.jodi.org or Magnet TV, it is not questioning the underlying structures – or code, if you so wish. It is indeed using the structures of twitter to get a work of art across, but it is not altering the code in any way. This is true for other projects as well, it seems Internet artists use social media as a platform, but they are not critiquing it or questioning the coding. There are of course, exceptions. Programmer and artist 8
Shunya Hagiwara made a program (or “app”) called The Whatever Button in 2012. It is, basically, a program you install in your Internet browser and it lets you “like” everything that is “likeable” on your Facebook-feed with one simple click. The work won New Face Award at the New Media Arts Festival in Japan, and Hagiwara has expressed that it was the structure of Facebook more than anything he wanted to question. “We depend so much on […] the structure arbitrarily set up by Facebook, and I wanted to do something witty and make fun of it.” (Wktokyo: 2013). However, it is clear that Internet artists back in the 1990s worked with the composition of the net in a more probing way than those active in 2013. But was it merely a case of early net art pioneers genuine interest in dissecting the underlying architecture of the Internet or something else? In the Gordon Graham's book The Internet: a philosophical inquiry from 1999 the word “technophilia” is discussed. It is a word describing people who are primarily interested in new technology, and secondary what this technology can be used for, or the consequences that new technology might have. “Their love for technology, we might say, is blind”, states Graham (Gordon Graham: 1999:40). The book does not specifically cover Internet art, or art at all, but it is still interesting to toy with the idea that the notion of technophilia could apply to this as well. At least it could be argued to be applicable for early Internet art pieces. Alexei Shulgin, another net art pioneer, stated in an interview with Timlam Baumgärtel from 1997, that he is not interested in the future of the medium but simply enjoying the moment. He also expressed that “if you deal with technology-based arts, the very first years are always the most exciting ones”, and drew parallels to early photography (in Tilman Baumgärtel: 1997). This is of course Shulgin's personal opinion, but I would argue against this on several different levels. If the interest in an art genre primarily lies in the interest of the new technology which that art type uses, the interest is not really in the “art”. It is also quite a bold and unthoughtful statement to make about a technology that has presumably evolved faster than any other. Later in the interview Shulgin explains further that he is not looking forward to when the Internet will gain mass popularity. He predicts the net to become overwhelming and with everyone being able to make a website, to quote him; “Who would search for grains of gold in all this shit?” (in Tilman Baumgärtel: 1997). Quite a few of the popular Internet art works that are post 2010 seem to be humorous. One of the most influential younger Internet artists active today must be considered to be Rafaël Rozendaal, born in 1980. His work often consists of animation based unique websites, that has some elements of interactivity. More than anything though, they are witty and “fun”. Ringingtelephone.com from 2010 is a black screen and the sound of a ringing telephone. Deepblackhole.com, also made in 2010, is an interactive piece where you see a black hole and rock. 9
If you wish you can choose to place the rock in the hole and listen to the cartoon-like sound of it “falling” forever. The art world, as well as a more general crowd, seems to be receptive of Rozendaal's work. At the end of 2012 he made a blog entry claiming that his websites have had more than 40 million unique visitors (Rafael Rozendaal: 2012). Can Rozendaal's popularity partially be connected to that we so often expect to find humour on the Internet, today? There is so much humour and entertainment circulating the cyberspace today, in the shape of an infinite number of funny cat videos and grotesque inside jokes – has this changed our expectations of the net? Rachel Greene's book Internet Art from 2004 discusses what we expect to find when browsing the web. She compares art online with public sculptures or murals, and explains how “web sites are easy to overlook as 'art'” (Rachel Greene: 2004: 12). Whether the many Internet users think of, for example, Rozendaal's websites as art is impossible to say, nevertheless they seem be appealed by them. In the next section I will discuss Internet humour and other aspects of Internet culture in a broader context, as well as looking at examples when images associated with humour are turned into art. Section 2: Going viral – Internet memes, cats – and art. What is a meme - today, in 2013? It was first mentioned, in popular culture, 1976 and coined by ethologist Richard Dawkins in the book The Selfish Gene. A meme is an idea that propagates itself and survives and spreads from a person to another person, and beyond.
“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool leaping from brain to brain […]” (Richard Dawkings: 1976: 129) Today in 2013, I would assume most people online associate the word with a, often humorous, picture with a caption that is circulated online through the use of different portals. However it can also be a video, a GIF or likewise that goes viral – something that spreads rapidly, uncontrolled and is often adapted and changed by anonymous authors and Internet users, making their own versions of the original. (Karen Schubert: 2003). As far as image based online memes go, one of the most popular groups must be considered 10
to be the LOLcats. The format is fairly simple, it consists of a picture of a cat, with a funny large scale caption, often in Ariel Black or Impact fonts. The grammar in a LOLcat often contains some kind of error, for example, many begin with the phrase “I can has... ?”, originating from “Happy Cat”, pictured in the introduction (Anil Dash: 2007). Many artists that have worked with Internet memes, and specifically LOLcats, in their practice, including Rachel Maclean's video work 'LolCats' from 2012. “Lolcats – inspired by the Internet meme of the same name – explores an amalgam of past and present manifestations of cat worship.” (Rachel Maclean: 2012).
Fig. 4: Still from the work LolCats, Rachel Maclean, 2012.
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Fig. 5: Untitled meme by Max Ronnersjö, posted on tumblr in 2012.
The work is very intriguing and of course a clear example of an artist using the Internet as a source of inspiration, but its main audience is still within the physical art world and not the Internet world, (or the Internet art world for that matter), even though a short excerpt of the the video is uploaded to Youtube. An artist that actively spends time on online communities is Max Ronnersjö. On his website he declares that he “is always working on Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons” (Max Ronnersjö: 2013). He also frequently creates memes and posts them on online image banks such as tumblr and imgur. A few of his uploaded memes discuss art, and the structure of the art world – as fig. 6 illustrates. To place art within a context where art is normally not viewed is nothing new. As Sean Ashton puts it; “ 'Embedded art' might rather be defined as that which must go ignored by the majority in order to gratify the minority who do see it” (Sean Ashton: 2010: 86). One example Ashton presents is Adam Chodzko's Flasher from the mid 90s, which are short films recorded onto the ends of film cassettes rented from video stores and then returned to the store. Ronnersjö's memes work in a similar way and compared to Maclean's video, seem to be site specific for the Internet, and particularly for online communities. His work is embedded within them, where as Maclean merely uses Internet culture as an inspiration. That said, Maclean's “LOLcats” is a complex work that clearly critiques online culture and questions contemporary cat worshipping (which is discussed further at the end of this section) in a more probing way than Ronnersjö. A combination of the two artist's practices would be rewarding, in my opinion. One of the fastest spreading, and most widely spread, Internet memes is the music video 12
Gangnam Style, by South Korean musician PSY. When writing this, in late 2013, it has been viewed more than 1.7 billion times on Youtube, making it the most viewed video ever posted on the portal (PSY: 2012). Countless adaptations have been made since the video first was uploaded in 2012, but the most discussed within the art world is presumably Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's version (Ai Weiwei: 2012). There are many interesting layers in Weiwei's version. It is no secret that the artist has had serious difficulties with the Chinese government. His website has been blocked for access in China numerous times and in 2011, he even got detained for 81 days – for “economic crimes”, although not officially charged for anything (Edward Wong: 2011). In Weiwei's video he is dancing around and waving a pair of handcuffs around, and the title of it is “草泥马 style”, meaning Grass Mud Horse Style, which is referencing a meme used by Chinese anti-government bloggers. According to Alex Pasternack on VICE it is a “a big middle finger to the Chinese government“ (Alex Pasternack: 2012). But is Grass Mud Horse Style a piece of art, or is it simply a video of the artist having fun? Is it both? Regardless, it is an example of when an Internet meme is used as a tool for political activism. In the book The Net Delusion, from 2011, discussing Internet and democracy, Evgeny Morozov makes quite an unequivocal statement about Internet memes and LOLcats, meaning that they are solemnly entertainment that makes the audience numb. “Whom exactly do we expect to lead the digital revolution? The lolcats?” asks Morozov ironically (Evgeny Morozov: 2011: 74). I can understand his standpoint, and at first glance the many memes spreading all over the Internet can appear to be plain stupefying nonsense, but as in the Grass Mud Horse Style example – it is not always the case. Basically, a LOLcat is an Internet meme and a meme is – still today – an idea that spreads. The idea itself could be anything. Returning to Dawkins. In a recent interview with Wired about his word being “hijacked”, he expresses similar thoughts: “The meaning [of an Internet meme] is not that far away from the original. It's anything that goes viral. . [...] when anybody talks about something going viral on the Internet, that is exactly what a meme is and it looks as though the word has been appropriated for a subset of that.” (Richard Dawkins in Olivia Solon: 2013) Gagnam Style and Richard Dawkings aside, one questions remains, though – why cats? Why have this domesticated animal risen to become the most common imagery on the Internet in the present day? In the 2006 book Cat by Katharine M. Rogers, the relationship between humans and cats is discussed. Unfortunately, the book does not cover the Internet cat (or LOLcat) phenomenon. I 13
would assume this is partially to do with the LOLcat's not starting to gain momentum within a general audience until early 2007 (Know Your Meme Episodes: 2007), which means basically a year after the book was published. Worshipping of cats, which according to me, LOLcats is a contemporary adaptation of, can be traced back to ancient Egypt, and Katharine Rogers explains how cats were often treated very generously and that statues of the cat goddess Bastet were a common artefact in the households (Katharine M. Rogers: 2006:17). Later in the book, Rogers discusses how cats today are appreciated more as individuals and that “ […] we are less apt to turn cats into symbols” (Katharine M. Rogers: 2006:142). For the LOLcats, this is both very true and very untrue at the same time. On the one hand, LOLcats are first and foremost images. Many of the cats that feature in the memes only exist as images in those particular memes. “Happy Cat” as pictured in the introduction of this essay, is believed to have been a 'British shorthair' named Frank, and according to Know Your Meme he died
Fig. 6: Remix of the original “I can has cheezburger?”, posted on Know Your Meme.
in 2007 (Know Your Meme Memes: 2010). Even though the “I can has cheezburger?”-meme is believed to first have been posted in 2003, Frank still passed away before the meme started to peak and remains just as an image – or as I would argue – a symbol. “Happy Cat” (or Frank) lives on through numerous adaptations and remixes of the original image, but is always based on the very same original image. This is also the case for many other LOLcats from the same era, for example “Ceiling Cat” which to this day remains unidentified (Know Your Meme: Memes: 2011). On the other hand, some of the cats famous from memes have become celebrities. A clear example of this is “Grumpy Cat”, who first appeared as a LOLcat meme online in late 2012, and is today a celebrity. The owners arrange meet and greets for the fans to meet her (Wayne Alber Brenner: 2013). You can buy t-shirts of her and she is going to star in an upcoming feature film 14
(Tech Feed: 2013).”Grumpy Cat” or Tardar Sauce, which is her real name, seems to be appreciated more on an individual level than as just as an image. Without discussing contemporary cat worshipping in any greater depth or where it originates from, it is safe to argue that the Internet is a fast changing and almost infinite environment – and why some things tend to gain mass exposure where other things do not, is more or less speculation. Katharine M. Rogers' book though, is clearly already outdated for not even mentioning cats online, or how we treat them. In the next section I will discuss trolling, another type of Internet humour that sometimes, but not always, involves memes and cats – and that echoes across into art production.
Section 3: Trolling outside and within the art world Trolling is quite a complex and big part of Internet humour that exists mainly on forums and message boards. The first trolling is believed to originate back to 1994, and took place on the early message board (back then refereed to as a newsgroup) alt.folklore.urban (AUF) (Michele Tepper 1997: 39). The forum user “snopes” posted a new thread about, what he claims, is a technical error in the TV-series Star Trek. According to snopes, it is weird that when a shuttle ascends from the mother ship – it casts a shadow on the hull of it. As quoted in the article cited above, by Michele Tepper, he states; “Hello? Are there any technical advisors working on this show? Do they really think that objects cast shadow in a vacuum? I know zip about physics, but even I could spot that one.” (in Michele Tepper: 1997: 39) Analysing this quote, the core of trolling is not to make a simple joke, but to make the reader think that you are (or that you may be) serious. If you reply and explain to the poster how things really are, and that objects do cast shadows even in a vacuum – you have lost. That it what the troller (or simply, the “troll”) wants. Tim Dowling has put together a small guide for how to deal with online trolls, published in the online version of The Guardian. “Trolling is one of those rare problems best handled by ignoring it – if you do, it usually goes away. Trolls want your attention and discomfiture; they feed on your impotent rage.” (Tim Dowling: 2012)
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Dowling has a point here, of course, but his view is also a bit shallow. Tepper, cited above, argues that trolling and how a community deals with trolling can strengthen a net community – although often at the expense of newcomers (Michele Tepper: 1997: 41). To just ignore anyone you think might be a troll, as Dowling suggests, has proven be problematic as well. On the controversial Swedish forum Flashback a young man with the user name LurifaxFlux made a post claiming that he would commit suicide and broadcast this online – he also provided a link connected to his webcam so people could watch him. Many users, probably assuming this was merely another trolling, wrote messages that were simply taunting; [translated by author] “I can tell by the way you are writing that you are just joking, go hang yourself [...]”, was one message posted by the user Ower (Flashback forum: 2010). Sadly, LurifaxFlux went through with his plans. Considering how trolling operates in the wider public sphere, it is interesting to consider trolling within the world of art. Does it exist, and what forms can it take? There have been many hoaxes or pranks being played on, and within, the art world. Aspects of Duchamp's work are argued by many to be, or at least they were, when produced in the 1910s, hoaxes (Elliot Feldman: 2008). To give a more recent example, Andreas Slominski planted sawn-off tree stumps next to Unter den Linden in Berlin, causing the police to start an investigation whether it was in matter of fact one of the trees on the historic avenue that had been vandalised (Laura Cumming: 2005). I would argue though, that hoaxes differ a lot from trollings. For a trolling to make sense in the art world, it is logical that it contains, or references Internet phenomena in some way. In 2010 the artist duo “100101110101101.org”, consisting of Eva and Franco Mattes, made a work called Catt; a sculpture inspired, or in fact, copying an Internet LOLcat meme, with the help of a taxidermist (100101110101101.org online: 2010).
Fig. 7: The copied meme, posted on 4chan, 2010
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Fig. 8: The work ”Catt” on display in a gallery in Texas.
The work however, does not end with the artists simply copying the Internet meme. When exhibiting it, they claimed that the work was in fact by Italian artist Maurizo Cattelan, known for his work with taxidermy animals. According to Eva and Franco Mattes, they decided to produce the work after a discussion with a friend. The friend said that the “generation of Internet addicts and geeks” were wasting his time online. Eva and Franco, on the other hand, argued that Internet creativity is good and that more art is created because of this. They also argued that “such art is created anonymous for anonymous and circulates freely” (Eva and Franco Mattes: 2010). It is, of course, heavily debatable whether the memes and LOLcats that are produced and uploaded to the Internet everyday classify as art – but it is very interesting that artists use this as an inspiration and a subject matter for art and research, especially when they incorporate elements of trolling. According to the artists, “The reception by the art world was enthusiastic […]” and that “Collectors inquired for its price and were willing to spend huge amounts of money to buy it.” (Eva and Franco Mattes: 2010). The work “Catt” is interesting on more than one level; the copying of a meme in combination with a “proper trolling” makes this an important mark in how Internet culture is influencing Fine Art. What I think completes the work is that a close up photo of the sculpture itself was turned into a meme by an anonymous author (Melissa Gronlund: 2012). As the Mattes couple themselves write on the net art portal Rhizome; “Somehow the circle was closed, and what started on the Internet went back to the Internet. For dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” (Eva and Franco Mattes: 2010). 17
Fig. 9: The meme originating from the sculpture “Catt”.
Conclusion and summary This essay has discussed aspects of Internet culture, and Internet humour in particular, an almost endless subject-matter to research and dissect, in relation to Fine Art and contemporary popular culture. Section 1 deals with Internet art through a historical point of view, and the essay argues that early net art pioneers were more interested in the underlying architecture of the Internet than those of today. This could be a case of how easy it has become to make a website today. As an Internet user in 2013, you do not need to know anything about code to set up a blog or a simple website. Generally I think this is a good thing, since it makes Internet usage more democratic. An Internet artist does not need to know coding any more than a painter needs to know how to produce a brush. Sites like tumblr and Wordpress have made this even smoother. Although humour is subjective I would argue it is safe to say that, for example, the work of Rozendaal is “funnier” and more crowdpleasing than that of Jodi.org. The growing accessibility of the Internet and the birth of Internet humour – (memes, LOLcats etc.) can not be overlooked when discussing why Internet art is more 18
humorous in 2013 compared to 1994. I would argue that online culture- and humour has changed Internet art profoundly. Even newer works by Jodi.org is more humours than the early ones. A clear example of this would be the work Max Payne CHEATS ONLY from 2006, where the PC game Max Payne 2 is being played with all the cheats activated simultaneously, causing the game to turn into a weird abstraction, with the player being able to, amongst other things, run through walls, fly and loose all of their clothes (Jodi.org: 2006). The end product, or the art work, is an online interactive website with both footage from the actual game play and the “hacked” code that the activation of the cheats generated.
Fig. 10: Screen shot of the work Max Payne CHEATS ONLY, 2006, Jodi.org.
Section 2 deals with discussing memes, and LOLcats in more detail. It is made clear that artists are using features of online culture both as an inspiration for production of new work, but also as a site for work. Digital curated image banks, such as tumblr, are used as an archive and storage space for documentation of physical works – but also as a site where artists working with the production of online memes can embed their work within a suitable environment. In the introduction of the essay, Rafaël Rozendaal is quoted claiming that low culture (such as online content, memes, popular culture, etc.) and high culture (such as Fine Art), are still miles away from each other. I would argue against this, I think that the lines between low- and high culture are not being blurred out with artists using online content in their practice, but rather that the Fine Art World is turning aspects of online content into high culture, simply by using them and crediting them. Section 3 deals with trolling, another Internet phenomenon that often goes hand-in-hand 19
with memes and LOLcats. Hoaxes have been part of the art world for a long time, and online trolling can be viewed as a deviation of this. From the given examples in the section, it is clear that artists today do not simply play hoaxes on the art world – they troll it as well. I would argue that online trolling has changed art world hoaxing and increased its complexity. Everything considered, it is clear that that Internet culture (and humour) in 2013 has a huge impact on the Fine Art world, and in the production and displaying of art. Artists seem to be receptive to and appealed by online phenomena. However there is not a lot of artists that are critical of it. It seems that some aspects of online culture today are embedded in our minds, and we do not tend to question it, but accepting it as a part of everyday life. Contemporary critical writing also has not yet managed to catch up with the fast changing and vivid world that parts of the Internet are. New terms within online culture are invented each day, and writing about Internet one day can be very different from writing about it the next. If this essay would have been written just two years ago, the sources used would have been completely different. Looking forward, if this essay were to be written in 2016, it is fairly safe to predict that this would be the case even then. In the future this essay may serve as a good snapshot of its time, but will more or less be outdated when I press the icon of a 90s floppy disc in order to save the document.
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Judkis, M., 2012, 'Father of video art Nam June Paik gets American Art Museum exhibit'. Article on Washington Post Online, URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/going-out-guide/post/fatherof-video-art-nam-june-paik-gets-american-art-museum-exhibit-photos/2012/12/12/c16fa980-448b11e2-8e70-e1993528222d_blog.html (23/10/13) IASPIS, 2009, 'Whatever happened to net art?'., Press release for seminar, URL: http://www.konstnarsnamnden.se/default.aspx?id=13243 Jansson, M., 2010, 'Vad hände med nätkonsten?'., Article on Konsten. URL: http://konsten.net/? p=2326 (23/10/13). Know Your Meme / Episodes, 2007, 'LOLcats – episode 5, 2007 season'. Video on Knowyourmeme.com, URL: http://knowyourmeme.com/videos/46606-lolcats (25/10/13). Know Your Meme / Memes, 2011, 'Ceiling Cat'. Page on Knowyourmeme.com, URL: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/ceiling-cat (25/10/13). Know your Meme / Memes, 2010, 'Happy Cat'. Page on Knowyourmeme.com, URL: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/happy-cat (25/10/13).
Lialina, O. & Samyn, M., 1997, 'Heaven&Hell'. Internet based artwork. URL: http://www.zuper.com/heaven&hell/ (22/10/13) LurifaxFlux, 2010, 'Hängning', thread on Flashback Forum, URL: https://www.flashback.org/t1322408 (10/09/13) Mattes, E. & Mattes, F., 2010, 'Internet cornucopia vs. high art constipation'. Posting on Rhizome, URL: http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/47989/ (11/09/13) Maclean, R., 2012, 'Synopsis for the work 'Lolcats', Artist website, URL: http://www.rachelmaclean.com/lolcats_moreinfo.html (10/10/13) 23
PSY, 2012, 'Gangnam Style'. Music video on Youtube, URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0 (16/09/13) Ringingtelephone.com, 2010, Internet based artwork by Rafaël Rozendaal. URL: http://www.ringingtelephone.com (23/10/13) Ronnersjö, M., 2013, Artist website, URL: http://www.maxronnersjo.se/ (08/10/13) Rozendaal, R., 2012 'High Culture / Low Culture', Blog entry, URL: http://www.newrafael.com/high-culture-low-culture/ (10/10/13) Rozendaal, R., 2012 'Thank you 2012', Blog entry, URL: http://www.newrafael.com/thank-you2012/ (23/10/13) Sherman, A., 2013 'Lil Bub and Friends at at the Internet Cat Video Film Festival', Blouin Artinfo International Edition, URL: http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/955105/video-lil-bub-andfriends-at-the-internet-cat-video-film (10/10/13) Solon, O., 2013 'Richard Dawkins on the internet's hijacking of the word 'meme' ', Wired Online, URL: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/20/richard-dawkins-memes (09/10/13) Schubert, K., 2003, 'Bazaar goes bizarre'. USA Today Online, URL: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-07-28-ebay-weirdness_x.htm (16/09/13) Tech Feed, 2013, 'Grumpy Cat: The Movie'. Video on Youtube, URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x7Rn0o10dA (25/10/13) Weiwei, A., 2012, '草泥马 Style' Music video on YouTube, URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=4LAefTzSwWY (22/09/13) Wktokyo, 2013, 'Back streets of the Internet', short documentary posted on YouTube, URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjWJsE7B1cs&feature=youtu.be (23/10/13)
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Wong, E., 2011, 'Chinese Defend Detention of Artist on Grounds of ‘Economic Crimes’, New York Times Online, URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/08/world/asia/08china.html (22/09/13). YouTube Statistics, 2013, URL: http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/en/statistics.html (23/10/13).
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