Claire Bishop and participatory art...... & Yochai Benkler and the Wealth of Networks
On one hand, we are going to continue to read and think about issues of intellectual property and creativity -- these issues are so important and convoluted that we should spend our remaining week focused on them. Also, on the other hand, we should continue to think about 'Research-based Art' and participatory art. I think it will be useful to read some Claire Bishop articles, and Yochai Benkler's The Wealth if Networks in tandem.
We should first prepare ourselves for the SVA conference next weekend (Sunday Dec 2) and the lecture by Claire Bishop. Since we are looking forward to hearing and later discussing her keynote address, here are a few additional articles to consider.
Bio: Claire Bishop (born 1971) is an art historian and critic based in the History of Art Department at CUNY
Graduate Center, New York since September 2008. Previously Bishop was
an associate professor in the Department of Art History at the
University of Warwick, Coventry and Visiting Professor in the Curating
Contemporary Art Department at the Royal College of Art, London. Bishop
is editor of the highly regarded volumes Participation (2006) and Installation Art: A Critical History (2005) and is a contributor to many art journals including Artforum, Flash Art, and October; her essay “Antagonism and Relational Aesthetics,” which appeared in October
in 2004, remains an influential critique of relational aesthetics.
Bishop is currently working on a history and theory of socially-engaged
art. In 2008 she co-curated (with Mark Sladen) the exhibition Double Agent (ICA,
London; Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre; and Baltic Centre for
Contemporary Art, Gateshead). Bishop lives and works in New York.
Time and place for the Sunday School of Visual Arts conference:
Meet up in the lobby at around 1:30pm-1:45pm
CRITICAL INFORMATION: 2012 A GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE SPONSORED BY THE MFA ART CRITICISM & WRITING PROGRAM (SVA)
Also, start reading Yochai Benkler's The Wealth of Networks for next Tuesday. We'll go as far as we can, considering we're doubling up with Claire Bishop for the conference. Don't sweat it if you can't get all the way through this by Tuesday; we will continue with it the following week.
Assignment for next Tuesday (Dec 4): Yochai Benkler
The Wealth of Networks
1) Introduction
Part I: The Networked Information Economy
and
2) Some Basic Economics of Information Production, etc.
Bio: Yochai Benkler is the Berkman Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies
at Harvard, and faculty co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet
and Society. Since the 1990s he has played a part in characterizing the
role of information commons and decentralized collaboration to
innovation, information production, and freedom in the networked economy
and society. His books include The Wealth of Networks: How social
production transforms markets and freedom (Yale University Press 2006),
which won academic awards from the American Political Science
Association, the American Sociological Association, and the McGannon
award for social and ethical relevance in communications. His work is
socially engaged, winning him the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
Pioneer Award for 2007, Public Knowledge's IP3 Award in 2006, and the
Ford Foundation Visionaries Award in 2011. It is also anchored in the
realities of markets, having been cited as "perhaps the best work yet
about the fast moving, enthusiast-driven Internet" by the Financial
Times and named best business book about the future in 2006 by Strategy
and Business, . Benkler has produced reports or served in an advisory
capacity for a range communications and intellectual property regulators
and policy makers at the national and international levels.
His work can be freely accessed at benkler.org.
ASSIGNMENT: PAPER + PRESENTATION #3 - Due November 27
Choose and continue reading one of the following books:
- Lewis Hyde's Common as Air
- Either one of Lawrence Lessig's books: Free Culture or Remix
- James Boyle's Public Domain
Consider this assignment to be an in-depth inquiry into the ongoing state of transition of our
cultural commons, "free culture" and the public domain as
charted and discussed through any one of these books, and beyond. For this paper I ask that you take a wholistic approach to the issues,
using one of these books as a guide, but utilizing the many resources on the
web to research specific issues, problems, lawsuits, disagreements, historical or
contemporary. "Research" is the operative term here. Consider the historical precedents in Western culture that underpin different attitudes about authorship and ownership, free speech, free enterprize and the gift economy. Utilize the readings from last week and the readings below, which provide useful resources, key concepts and food for thought.
The paper is due November 27; that day everyone will also give a short, 10-minute presentation with visuals in class.
Your papers and presentations will be considered in terms of the depth of your reflection on these issues. Consider the following questions:
How and under what circumstances has copyright historically provided a useful if limited monopoly for authors and artists?
how has our culture changed since copyright was first instituted in the 18th century, and how has copyright shifted since then?
how has digital culture had an impact on these shifts?
have these changes affected innovation and the conditions required for creativity? If so, how? Be specific.
And of course: how have these issues affected you, your peers, your medium or mediums, and your sense of intellectual and creative freedom?
Your research is not limited to these questions.
READING ASSIGNMENT FOR NEXT WEEK
Please read these articles/blog posts, and watch the online lectures:
Okay, here it is: remember "Toywar" from a few weeks back? Well, that idea and the name lent itself to what was to become "Joywar" (this is where I come clean!). Here's the full compendium:
My voice-over + slide show from the 2006 conference at NYU "Comedies of Fair U$e", organized by Larry Lessig and Lawrence Weschler for the New York Institute for the Humanities
(that's LW's voice at the beginning of the clip introducing me and the
subject of the panel). It was a great conference: all the panels were
organized by cultural category (publishing, fiction writing,
documentary film, visual art, music sampling, etc). The visual art
panel included me and my then nemesis, Susan Meiselas, Art Spiegelman,
Lebbeus Woods and Judge Alex Kozinsky. Here's my spiel, in a tightly
wound 13-1/2 minutes (as opposed to my 45min Columbia Univ. talk given in 2004 on the same subject -- by 2006 I was much clearer on the issues):
1) Benkler, Yochai, 2006. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Yale University Press. Read online: http://www.benkler.org/wonchapters.html
2) Boyle, James. 2008. The public domain: enclosing the commons of the mind. New Haven: Yale University Press. Read online: Download
The-public-domain
3) Hyde, Lewis. 2011. Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Read online:
Download HYDE-Common-As-Air
4) ________, 1983. The Gift: Imagination and the erotic life of property. New York: Vintage Books. Read online:
Download Hyde-The-Gift
5) Lessig, Lawrence. 2004. Free culture: how big media uses technology and the law to lock down culture and control creativity. New York: Penguin Press. Read online: http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/
7) Stallman, Richard. 2002. Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution. Free Software Foundation Read online:
Download Free-as-in-Freedom-Stallman
8) ________, 2002. Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Gnu Press. Read online:
Download Richard-Stallman-essays
The eyebeam list has some interesting threads that speak to us of the as-yet open, unformulated, seemingly 'entropic' environment of the Internet in those days. I extracted and saved as a PDF one of the early conversation threads that hits on a number of important themes, and through which a number of characters and figures introduce themselves:
These themes are ever-relevant, despite the change in scenery. We'll look through this PDF together.
I extracted a few links from this thread. The host of the discussion, Eyebeam, now exists as a non-profit exhibition space in Chelsea, whereas the X Art Foundation or 'blast' is long gone, renamed or morphed into something else, its domain name no longer associated with anything close to art and the net:
3) Treasure hunt: look through the <eyebeam><blast> listserv archive (ca.1987-1998) until you find items worthy of discussion. Send me the link/s. I will post to the blog and we will discuss in class:
Interaction: Artistic Practice in the Network: The Utopian Net and Artist List-serves of
the 1990s: <eyebeam><blast> LISTSERV ARCHIVE
Before we move into
the 1980s-90s with the 'Digital Revolution' etc, we will linger for a moment longer on the
1970s and the precursors to digital art and new media.
- To begin, we will consider the chapter in Stephen Wilson's Information Arts on Research-based art.
- We will look at several essays by Robert
Smithson in conjunction with an article in the September ARTFORUM by Caroline A. Jones on the Systems Esthetics of Jack Burnham.
- We will read an essay by David Salle on the work of Jack Goldstein.
- We will read a recently published essay by the video artist and thinker Tom Sherman.
Sherman, Tom. (2012) Video is a Perceptual Prosthetic.
Download Tom Sherman essay > Some info: The Centre for Art Tapes just launched a new critical text on video, the medium and art form, by Tom Sherman. Video is a Perceptual Prosthetic lays out a scientific sense of video as it relates to human perception, exploring a medium that has the ability to literally provide us with a replay of our experiences as we are living them. The artist begins with an analysis of perception and its historical relevance to the evolution of video technology from analogue tape to HDV through to cybernetic technology. Sherman also analyzes the impact of video technology on other media technologies, in particular tracing the devolution of television, a topic explored throughout his writing over the years, such as his Video 2005: Three texts on video.
Tom Sherman is an artist and writer. His interdisciplinary art has been exhibited internationally, including shows at the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art and the Venice Biennale. He received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2010. Sherman is a professor in the Department of Transmedia at Syracuse University in New York.
This week we will take look at specific new media artists who were working and writing in the mid-1990s, and examine how their ideas may have developed from or were influenced by earlier media.
Readings:
We will consider Hal Foster's important and influential essay, "An Archival Impulse," mentioned by Claire Bishop in her Art Forum article, "Digital Divide."
We will read through the Fall 1997 issue of Art Journal, edited by Johanna Drucker. The issue deals with issues in digital art and electronic media. It will be interesting to compare these articles to those in the current issue of Art Forum.
Precursors: Performance Art / Video Art / Conceptual Art
This week and next we will consider
the origins of new media art and summarize its roots in performance art, video
and conceptualism. We will consider how artists have explored
performance in relation to technology and new media. We will think about the invention and diffusion of video art, which set
off numerous new media debates about the nature of video images and whether or
not such images could be considered ‘art’. We will consider the ways in which video
installation changed the spatial values of art and how the possibilities of
surveillance and politics allowed artists to explore new regions of the lyrical
and cultural identity. We will consider how conceptual art provided substantial
precursors to new media art starting with conceptualism in the late 1960s.
Readings + Viewings:
Yvonne Rainer: Bio page in Senses of Cinema. Dancer, choreographer, performer, filmmaker and writer Yvonne Rainer,
who began choreographing in 1961 and made her first film in 1967, is a
key figure in the story of the New York avant-garde in terms of both her
writing and practice. LINK
Watch:
Choreographer and Filmmaker Yvonne Rainer speaks to Robert Storr (YouTube) - Boston University, 2004. Includes clips from dances such as The Mind is a Muscle. Yvonne Rainer, who started out as a choreographer and later focused her attention on filmmaking, reflects on her work with host Robert Storr.
To Read in Print and Online:
With the sudden timely appearance of ARTFORUM's 50th Anniversary Issue (Sept 2012), which takes the theme "Art's New Media", we will consider several excerpts: