Re: [-empyre-] traditional art world politics

["Patrick Lichty" <voyd@voyd.com>]

> Dear Patrick,
>
> Would you define what you mean by "traditional art world politics"? What
is
> the tradition, as you see it?


To me, such a comment (mine) is rather semantic, and was a sidenote, but I
see your point. What I mean by this is the cooptation of technological forms
of art by commodification and power structures (political, et al) that
define the set of relations that are more prevalent in the larger art
market.  For example, in conversation with SImon Biggs in '99, we remarked
at the relatively horizontal political field of the net art community, and
the again relatively open nature of that community.

At that time, some stratification was taking hold, although small, and now
that technological forms are being recognized more widely by the
traditionalist institutions (Tate, SFMoMA, Louvre, Whitney, Guggenheim).
This is also true of the the gallery system, albeit all of this on a smaller
scale.

My feeling on this is that the milieu of technological art will have a
component to it that is similar to the larger traditionalist art scene,
combined with the effects of consumer marketing and claims of creativity as
facilitated by technology.  Not that this is a radical shift, in that all of
this has in part has already taken place, but my thought is that it will
become more prevalent as technological art forays further into the
mainstream.

Not that many areas of technological art have their own agendas of elitism
(both by virtue of access to knowledge and development of skill [dare I say
'virtuosity'?], and others by technological, economic, social, and
educational issues), and will not permit a 'populist tech art' per se.
However, there are exceptions to all of this, such as the East LA high
school robotics champions, cyberzapatistas, hacker culture, open source
initiatives, etc.

Therefore, although the same relations seen in traditionalist forms seem to
be inscribing themselves onto technological forms, there are areas in which
these relations will be more or less evident, but I feel that on the
average, the move will be in the direction of the shape of the terrain of
the extant art world, professional and amateur.

However, as mentioned, this was merely a sidenote, and had little to do with
what I was trying to propose.