[-empyre-] Yiannis Colakides and Helene Black : Participatory Art

[Timothy Murray]

From: NeMe <nemeorg at gmail.com>


Dear Tim and Renate,

Thank you for your invitation to this project and here is our
contribution to the "Participatory Art: Digital Traces".
best regards
Yiannis & Helene
-------------------------

The internet with all its manifestations is transforming participatory
culture, shifting its orientation from the object to the subject  and
more recently from subject to data. Ideas are no longer collated in
sections or categories but tags. The archive has transformed into a
'cloud'. Participatory dependent internet art is expanding
exponentially. Server-side programming enables a cross-cultural,
cross-language cross-border collaboration where the 'location' of the
artwork is accessible on demand. The reproducible copy of internet
based work is one and the same as the original, albeit perhaps, as
only a fragment of the dynamic whole.

Machine reproduction is no longer an optional process, but a necessary
element for the existence of the virtual artwork which can now be void
of any material(istic) limitations. Artworks can now exist in the
cache of web browsers distributed in their thousands. They can be seen
as code, as 0s and 1s, as on/off switches. Social networking sites
such as Facebook and Twitter, sharing sites such as Youtube and Vimeo
and hybrid ones (social and sharing) such as Flicker, dominate because
of their participatory architecture. Wikipedia's participatory ethos
connects its documents though user contributions which are treated as
data linking its various pages/documents as well as other sites on the
net. Data, in this sense, is the latest unit of measurement, which by
combining it in its various permutations convinces us that we form a
consummate understanding. APIs which make the data available from such
sites aided the proliferation of database visualizations/infosthetics
and in many instances, rendering users as possible - if unaware -
participants in interfaces created.

As such, a work may be extended using participatory building blocks
contributed by individuals oblivious to this. This is a common
practice in the participatory arts from John Cage's 4'33" to Dave
Troy's twittervision who both - can be said - investigate noise as an
aesthetic quantity. For this type of experimental work, data has no
fixed content. But to what degree is any of the above true or really
applicable toward defining a new approach and understanding of
participatory culture?

In an age where individual practice and achievement still reigns, are
the intentions of the participatory-art creator truly altruistic in
regards to participatory contributions? The 'participant' still
remains just a participant, a necessary 'element' in the work's
creative process and realization, whose author still remains the
'author'. In the case of digital artworks the issue of system updates
poses additional concerns. What functions perfectly today might not
even be visible tomorrow. The code base of the artwork needs to be
constantly updated to ensure the continuation of its existence deeming
the presence of the author/administrator more necessary than ever
before. Is the transience of the work an essential feature embedded
within the "author's" concept? And, if so, is the immediacy of the
contributions by others the definitive element making the work a time
based collective action which also embodies a visual as a shared
narrative reference point?

Documented history praises the merits of individual achievement.
Although an ambiguous reference, it is interesting to note here that
the word 'idiot' etymologically derives from the Greek word '?ɬɫÉÕV'
(idios) meaning "private", "one's own". For the purpose of supporting
collective action - and consciously stretching our argument- any
participatory work initiated by an individual insistent upon assuming
the hierarchy of 'author' over the total work can etymologically be
described as 'idiotic'. In most cases, we are yet to acknowledge the
participants as co-authors whose traces have given extended dimension
to the body of work. These collective traces are not individual
outcomes although their generative framework might have been.

In our view - for genuine participatory art to exist, the instigation
of the initial idea as a valid claim to 'author' needs to be
reassessed and possibly deleted, the subject to be freed from the
object and the autonomy of the resulting outcome to be freed from all
its authors. We can now rethink the constraints of the object which is
no longer bound by physical laws but only by our cognitive abilities.
A cyclical activity where the resultant work is both the subject and
the process. E pluribus unum: a creative superorganism whose diverse
'gene pool' guarantees its constant transformation and survival.
Perhaps when this happens, the classification of the work as art will
be guided by shared ethics ensuring a new understanding of a more
encompassing concept of creative collaboration. Perhaps we will not
even be able to identify it as "art".

Yiannis Colakides and Helene Black (Cyprus) are 
co-founders of NeMe (www.neme.org)
Yiannis Colakides is an architect and a peer reviewer at LABS. Helene
Black is an artist, and educator.

-- 

Renate Ferro and Tim Murray
Co-Moderators, -empyre- a soft-skinned-space
Department of Art/ Rose Goldsen Archive of New Media Art
Cornell University