I keep meaning to write a post about Internet art—what it is, why I like it so much, why I think it’s actually good for you—but it keeps getting bumped down on my to do list.
It’s probably all for the best. There’s not that much to say other than this: Internet art is great because it’s a perfect channel for postmodernism and it allows postmodernism to be as awesome as it could ever be.
Postmodernism being, per Wikipedia, “a cultural, intellectual, or artistic state lacking a clear central hierarchy or organizing principle and embodying extreme complexity, contradiction, ambiguity, diversity, interconnectedness or interreferentiality, in a way that is often indistinguishable from a parody of itself.”
For instance, the above video pairs footage of various NASA launches with a beautifully cathartic pop song (sung by Kelly Clarkson, American Idol winner) made epic through some tremendous distortion.
What does it all mean? Is it beautiful? Is it stirring? Baffling? Serious? A joke? Anything? Is it art? I say all of the above. Am I right?
Could this piece exist outside of the internet? Absolutely. It’d fit perfectly well in a gallery, but another appeal of Internet art (for me) is how it can confuse medium and venue. Is video the medium? Or is it YouTube? Or is YouTube the venue? Is the impact of this piece different when embedded here or on Channel 53 where I found it this morning?
Discuss.
I’m not mentally focused right now, so I’m having trouble reacting to the more interesting questions you raised. But I wanted to leave a note professing my admiration for that vid. Man. That was thoroughly enjoyable (dragged a bit in the middle, to be fair, but whatever).
My only reaction beyond that is emphatic affirmation that the piece would have a different meaning depending on what site you saw it on, just as the work of many “real world” artists would feel different if it was left on a street versus in a clinically clean modern art gallery. (Imagine seeing the giant baby in the former vs. the latter - people would see it as some sort of sick abortion play on the streets, perhaps. Then homeless dudes would pee on it, presumably. ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Mueck)
Mueck always scares me, but, you know, wow. He’s good.
Also, you presume too much about the homeless (I hope).
And also, you’re right. This video could be taken any number of ways, and the site it’s embedded on would clearly be a determinant of which.
More internet art / loveliness: http://www.wefeelfine.org/
Searches the world’s blogs for sentences containing “I feel” or “I am feeling”, indexes them with some basic demographics, and represents the data beautifully. The result is a pulse of how the world feels. I love it.