New Media Art, ‘the law’ and Activism

Media Cultures 2

Week 6

30 March 2010

Tracey Meziane Benson

We will cover:• Historical basis in art and politics

– Activist art

– Strategy and practice

– Resistance art

• The new media context:

– Copyright

– Creative Commons

– Censorship

– Ethics

– Authenticity

– Emerging forms of aesthetics

Historical basis in art and politics

Francesco Goya, "The dream of reason produces monsters",1799

A long time ago…

• In the late 1700s, the Spanish artist Goya mass produced political etches that were distributed ‘under the radar’ of a government that heavily censored all forms of imagery and text.

Social realism

• Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic. The movement is a style of painting in which the scenes depicted typically convey a message of social or political protest edged with satire.

• Many artists who subscribed to Social Realism were painters with socialist (but not necessarily Marxist) political views. The movement therefore has some commonalities with the Socialist Realism used in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, but the two are not identical - Social Realism is not an official art, and allows space for subjectivity. In certain contexts, Socialist Realism has been described as a specific branch of Social Realism.

Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, 1936. A portrait of Florence Owens Thompson (1903-1983).

Conceptual art

“I try to deal with the complexities of power and social life, but as far as the visual presentation goes I purposely avoid a high degree of difficulty.”

– Barbara Kruger.

Kruger's words and pictures have been displayed in both galleries and public spaces, as well as framed and unframed photographs, posters, postcards, t-shirts, electronic signboards, billboards and on a train station platform in Strasbourg, France. For the past decade Kruger has created installations of video, film, audio and projection. Enveloping the viewer with the seductions of direct address, her work is consistently about the kindnesses and brutalities of social life: about how we are to one another.

Art and activism in context

• Activist art cites its origins from a particular artistic and political climate. In the art world, performance art of the late 1960s to the 70s worked to broaden aesthetic boundaries within visual arts and traditional theatre, blurring the rigidly construed distinction between the two. The transient, interdisciplinary, and hybrid nature of performance art allowed for audience engagement. The openness and immediacy of the medium invited public participation, and the nature of the artistic medium was a hub for media attention.

• Emerging forms of feminism and feminist art of the time was particularly influential to activist art. The idea that “the personal is the political”, that is, the notion that personal revelation through art can be a political tool, guided much activist art in its study of the public dimensions to private experience. The strategies deployed by feminist artists parallel those by artists working in activist art. Such strategies often involved “collaboration, dialogue, a constant questioning of aesthetic and social assumptions, and a new respect for audience” and are used to articulate and negotiate issues of self-representation, empowerment, and community identity.

• Conceptual Art sought to expand aesthetic boundaries in its critique of notions of the art object and the commodity system within which it is circulated as currency. Conceptual artists experimented with unconventional materials and processes of art production. Grounded by strategies rooted in the real world, projects in conceptual art demanded viewer participation and were exhibited outside of the traditional and exclusive space of the art gallery, thus making the work accessible to the public. Similarly, collaborative methods of execution and expertise drawn from outside the art world are often employed in activist art so as to attain its goals for community and public participation. Parallel to the emphasis on ideas that conceptual art endorsed, activist art is process-oriented, seeking to expose embedded power relationships through its process of creation.

• In the political sphere, the militancy and identity politics of the period fostered the conditions out of which activist art arose.

Activist art

• Activist art represents and includes aesthetic, sociopolitical, and technological developments that have attempted to challenge and complicate the traditional boundaries and hierarchies of culture as represented by those in power. Like protest art, activist art practice emerged partly out of a call for art to be connected to a wider audience, and to open up spaces where the marginalized and disenfranchised can be seen and heard.

• Activist art incorporates the use of public space to address socio-political issues and to encourage community and public participation as a means of bringing about social change. It aims to effect social change by engaging in active processes of representation that work to foster participation in dialogue, raise consciousness, and empower individuals and communities. The need to ensure the continued impact of a work by sustaining the public participation process it initiated is also a challenge for many activist artists. It often requires the artist to establish relationships within the communities where projects take place.

• If social movements are understood as “repeated public displays” of alternative political and cultural values, then activist art is significant in articulating such alternative views. Activist art is also important to the dimension of culture and an understanding of its importance alongside political, economical, and social forces in movements and acts of social change. One should be wary of conflating activist art with political art, as doing so obscures critical differences in methodology, strategy, and activist goals.

Strategy and practice

• In practice, activist art may often take the form of temporal interventions, such as performance, media events, exhibitions, and installations. It is also common to employ mainstream media techniques (through the use of billboards, posters, advertising, newspaper inserts…etc.). By making use of these commercial distributive channels of commerce, this technique is particularly effective in conveying messages that reveal and subvert its usual intentions.

• The use public participation as a strategy of activating individuals and communities to become a “catalyst for change” is important to activist art. In this context, participation becomes an act of self-expression or self-representation by the entire community. Creative expression empowers individuals by creating a space in which their voices can be heard and in which they can engage in a dialogue with one another, and with the issues in which they have a personal stake.

Resistance art

• Resistance art has long been a term used to describe those that use art as a way of showing their opposition to powerholders. The term has been used to define art that opposed such powers as the German Nazi party, and the Bolshevik Revolution.

John Heartfield, May 31, 1934 This piece shows humanity, broken on the wheel. It mirrors the traditional piece with a reference to the swastika, the Third Reich breaking human life.

The new media context• Anonymous (used as a mass noun) is a label and

Internet meme adopted within Internet culture to represent the actions of many online community users acting anonymously, usually toward a loosely agreed-upon goal. It is generally considered to be a blanket term for members of certain Internet subcultures.

• Actions attributed to Anonymous are undertaken by unidentified individuals who apply the Anonymous label to themselves. After a series of controversial, widely-publicized protests and reprisal DDoS (Distributed Disruption of Service) attacks by Anonymous in 2008, incidents linked to its cadre members are said to be increasingly common.

• The name Anonymous itself is inspired by the perceived anonymity under which users post images and comments on the Internet. Usage of the term Anonymous in the sense of a shared identity began on imageboards. A tag of Anonymous is assigned to visitors who leave comments without identifying the originator of the posted content. Users of imageboards sometimes jokingly acted as if Anonymous were a real person. As the popularity of imageboards increased, the idea of Anonymous as a collective of unnamed individuals became an internet meme.

The new media context cont…

Critical Art Ensemble

• (CAE) is a collective of five tactical media practitioners of various specializations including computer graphics and web design, film/video, photography, text art, book art, and performance.

• Formed in 1987, CAE's focus has been on the exploration of the intersections between art, critical theory, technology, and political activism. The group has exhibited and performed at diverse venues internationally, ranging from the street, to the museum, to the internet. Museum exhibitions include the Whitney Museum and The New Museum in NYC; The Corcoran Museum in Washington D.C.; The ICA, London; The MCA, Chicago; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; and The London Museum of Natural History.

• Steve Kurtz is a founding member of the performance art group, Critical Art Ensemble. He is known for his work in BioArt, and Electronic Civil Disobedience, and because of his arrest by the FBI in May 2004. His work often deals with social criticism.

The Internet as a Site of Resistance

• What makes the internet especially conducive to carrying out the aims of a resistant group? As technology grows and our dependence on it increases, the internet not only reveals itself as a web of connection between geographically diverse constituents, but as a tense fiber that holds a community

together, much like a cable that supports a bridge.

Kinds of internet resistance

• Online Protest can take many forms. Recently, bloggers supporting the people of Burma (Mayanmar) refrained from blogging an agreed day to instead post "Free Burma" banners on their sites in order to increase awareness of the political situation in this part of the world. But online protest can have more of a "direct action" feel. In a well-known example, the Electronic Disturbance Theatre joined forces with the Zapatista movement to create the Zapatista Tribal Port Scan (ZTPS), a software program designed to mount an attack on any website (such are the Mexican Military) by sending thousands of messages through ports open to the cyber network. Because an online protest can include thousands or hundreds of thousands of participants, the protest will be repeatedly inscribed on the system log. Protesters feel that the fact that this protest is enacted in a publicly accessible space increases its importance, as the internet lends a place of free exchange while the everyday reality of the protester may be markedly different.

Copyright

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

About Copyright:

“Copying is not illegal. Magazines, for example, are protected by copyright. Photocopying a magazine article to give to a friend or a student has long been accepted as "fair use," personal, educational, non-commercial. Printing a million copies of the same article -- whether you charge for it or just give it away because it has your company's picture is in it -- is obviously wrong and violates the author's and publisher's copyrights. Very understandable.”

http://in3.org/articles/personalethics.htm

Artist’s rights - VISCOPY

http://www.viscopy.com/ Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Copyright collecting agencies and societies such as VISCOPY (Visual Arts Copyright Collecting Agency) provide the most efficient and effective way for visual artists and rights owners to administer their copyrights on a national and international basis. Through reciprocal agreements, these agencies and societies agree to administer each other's repertoire in their respective territories for specific or non-specific rights. The agencies are traditionally non-profit, non-government, and directed by their members.

VISCOPY is the only dedicated visual artists’ copyright agency in the Australia Pacific region representing over 5,000 regional artists, and over 200,000 artists internationally for the Australasian territory.

How this was challenged

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Napster

Napster was a file sharing service that paved the way for decentralized P2P file-sharing programs such as Kazaa, Limewire, iMesh, Morpheus (computer program), and BearShare, which are now used for many of the same reasons and can download music, pictures, and other files. The popularity and repercussions of the first Napster have made it a legendary icon in the computer and entertainment fields

http://in3.org/articles/personalethics.htmhttp://www.slais.ubc.ca/courses/libr500/05-06-wt1/www/R_Martin/Nap_Arch.htm

Napster time line

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

A snap shot…

•May 1999: Napster online music service is founded by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker. •December 1999: The RIAA file a suit against Napster•January 2000: Napster's popularity grinds many academic computer networks to a halt. This prompts some universities to ban the service. •April 2000: Metallica and Dr. Dre sue Napster for violating state and federal copyright laws and racketeering. •May 2000: Rapper Chuck D, representing pro-Napster groups, tells the committee of House Small Business that the Web poses "a unique opportunity for consumers and artists". Rap-metal band Limp Bizkit, along with Offspring and Courtney Love, join him in speaking out on Napster's behalf. •October 2000: Napster is credited by pundits for driving Radiohead's Kid A album to the top of the Billboard charts. Tracks from the album were released onto Napster three months before the CD was shipped to stores.July 2001: Judge Patel orders Napster offline until such time as it is proven to be entirely free of illegal music. Metallica and Dr. Dre finally settle their lawsuits with Napster and Hank Barry is replaced as CEO by former BMG executive Konrad Hilbers.  

http://in3.org/articles/personalethics.htmhttp://www.slais.ubc.ca/courses/libr500/05-06-wt1/www/R_Martin/Nap_Arch.htm

Napster's brand and logo continue to be used by a pay service, having been acquired by Roxio

Creative Commons

Slide credit: Tracey Mezianehttp://www.aec.at/bilderclient/PR_2004_creativecommons_008_p.jpg

How do CC licenses work?

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/hoorn/http://wiki.creativecommons.org/History

How do CC licenses work cont…

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/hoorn/http://wiki.creativecommons.org/History

Ethics

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/pjethics.html

Although the role of a photojournalist is somewhat different to a cultural producer in the field of new media, there are some relevant linkages in terms of the ethical approaches that should be taken.

Like what???

For example: early photographic history is filled with artists-turned-photographers who set up situations with models and backdrops and made elaborate compositions from several negatives.

Ahh – image manipulation!

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

What are the social implications of ethics in photojournalism?

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/pjethics.html

In Approaches to Ethics, Jones et al. (1969) recommended that a person with an ethical dilemma first "ascertain the facts, sort and weigh the conflicting principles, apply partially indeterminate principles to the particular circumstances, and then, come to a decision"

As John Hulteng (1984) wrote in his book on media ethics, The Messenger's Motives, "One of the least enviable situations in the debate over what is ethical and what is not in the handling of news photographs is that of the photographer" (p. 154). A writer can observe a news scene quietly and anonymously and report the facts back in the newsroom. A photographer is uniquely tied to a machine-the camera. There is little opportunity for concealment, nor are hidden techniques desirable.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

What are the social implications of ethics in photojournalism?

http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/pjethics.html

The price of being responsible for the documentation of life in all its gloriously happy and tragically sad moments is that if some people do not like what they see, they will question a photojournalist's moral character. That reaction, however, is a necessary barometer of a photojournalist's ethics. It is a photographer's moral responsibility that the decision to take pictures is based on sound personal ethics that can be justified to all who disagree. Study hypothetical situations, know the values, principles, and loyalties that are a part of journalistic principles, and be familiar with the six major philosophies. With such a strong foundation, you will be better able to act decisively during a controversial situation.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Ethics, representation and identity

Sumanyu Satpathy in Ethics of RepreseNtATION: Media and the Indian Queer states that:

“When the “Other” is sought to be represented by the dominant self, power politics or ideology immediately comes into play. Since the mass media is of the dominant for the dominant and by the dominant, any insensitive media representation of a member of the minority group or the group itself runs the risk of using a stereotype, which is more often than not a mis-representation.”

Lyotard and Foucault are referenced a lot in this discussion

http://bangkok2005.anu.edu.au/papers/Satpathy.pdf

Authenticity

Fraud – online deception False identity and online

relationships Identity ‘correction’ as a

form of intervention Pseudonymity and pure

anonymity Credible information –

Wikipedia and collaborative authoring

Authenticity in art Issues of authenticity

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Fraud – online deception

Information exchange is a basic function of Usenet. Requests for information are very common and answers, both right and wrong, are usually forthcoming. In the real world we may believe a story if it was published in The Wall Street Journal and dismiss it if it appeared in The National Enquirer.

It is not so easy to discriminate between credible and false information

The cost of identity deception to the information-seeking reader is potentially high. Misinformation… is more likely to be believed when offered by one who is perceived to be an expert [Aronson 95].

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Fraud – online deception cont…

Erving Goffman, in his classic work The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life distinguished between the ``expressions given'' and the ``expressions given off''. The former are the deliberately stated messages indicating how the one wishes to be perceived; the latter are the much more subtle - and sometimes unintentional - messages communicated via action and nuance [Goffman 59].

Both forms of expression are subject to deliberate manipulation, but the ``expression given off'' may be much harder to control. One can write ``I am female'', but sustaining a voice and reactions that are convincingly a woman's may prove to be quite difficult for a man.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

False identity and online relationships

The mismatch of textual and visual signals… The verbal claim of being muscular is a conventional

signal. A change in the environment (the advent of the Web) has made it possible to send a more reliable signal of muscularity - a photograph. A prominent member of the group (the author of the above quote) put his photograph online, thus strengthening his claim to status (the photo is very impressive).

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Identity ‘correction’ as a form of intervention

Not all on-line deception is involves categories. Individual identity - one's claim to be a particular individual, either in the physical or the real world - can also be challenged. A particularly costly form of identity deception is impersonation. If I can pass as you, I can wreck havoc on your reputation, either on-line or off.

The ‘Yes Men’ use these forms of deception in areal world and online context…

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Pseudonymity and pure anonymity

It is useful to distinguish between pseudonymity and pure anonymity. In the virtual world, many degrees of identification are possible. Full anonymity is one extreme of a continuum that runs from the totally anonymous to the thoroughly named. A pseudonym, though it may be untraceable to a real-world person, may have a well-established reputation in the virtual domain; a pseudonymous message may thus come with a wealth of contextual information about the sender. A purely anonymous message, on the other hand, stands alone.

Credible information – Wikipedia and Everything

What makes a wiki? Two basic criteria make a site a wiki: authorship and

version control. The system of trust embedded in a wiki is thus primarily

social. While the design of a wiki makes it easier to correct data than to add malicious content or delete content (Viégas, Wattenberg, & Dave, 2004), vandals could theoretically prevail through determination and persistence.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

The nature of user compiled information

Diversified, mass distribution but relies on individuals passing information on -a viral process. Individual to individual to individual to individual ….

Communications via new media have the potential to continue ad infinitum

Mass audience for the sublime and the dreadful, the amateur and the professional

(how to distinguish between the 2?) Portable, mobile and personalised points of access Increasingly becoming less expensive: a lot can be done on

old machines

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Authenticity in art

“Authentic,” like its near-relations, “real,” “genuine,” and “true,” is what J.L. Austin called a “dimension word,” a term whose meaning remains uncertain until we know what dimension of its referent is being talked about.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Authenticity in art

Many of the most often-discussed issues of authenticity have centred around art forgery and plagiarism. A forgery is defined as a work of art whose history of production is misrepresented by someone (not necessarily the artist) to an audience (possibly to a potential buyer of the work), normally for financial gain.

Authenticity is contrasted with “falsity” or “fakery” in ordinary discourse, but, as noted, falsity need not imply fraud at every stage of the production of a fake.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Expressive authenticity

In contrast to nominal authenticity, there is another fundamental sense of the concept indicated by two definitions of “authenticity” mentioned in the Oxford English Dictionary: “possessing original or inherent authority,” and, connected to this, “acting of itself, self-originated.” This is the meaning of “authenticity” as the word shows up in existential philosophy, where an authentic life is one lived with critical and independent sovereignty over one’s choices and values; the word is often used in a similar sense in aesthetic and critical discourse.

In his discussion of authenticity of musical performance, Peter Kivy points out that, while the term usually refers to historical authenticity, there is another current sense of the term: performance authenticity as “faithfulness to the performer’s own self, original, not derivative or aping of someone else’s way of playing” (Kivy 1995).

New Media and Representation

A signifying practice based on digital technology New Media offers various ways of representing the

world, whether by immersing our senses in fictionalised ‘real life’ or fantasy or by allowing us access to ‘live’, ‘happening now’ information and dialogue

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

‘Thick’ authenticity

Shaffer argues for a ‘thick’ view of authenticity, which recognises that the different ‘kinds’ of authenticity presented in the literature are independent and mutually supporting: we can not achieve one without the other.

But - what does this mean?

•‘Authenticity’ is a rubbery term, like ‘truth’•Shaffer discovered in 1996 that there were 2011 citations of ‘authentic’ and ‘authenticity’ in the ERIC catalogue.•There are types of ‘authenticity’

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

ERIC – Educational Resources Information Center

‘Thick’ authenticity cont…

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

This table looks at the context of education, but could be applied to any situation.

Personal – indicates whether the individual find it ‘authentic’ and valuable – a micro view

Real-world – the macro or global view – perhaps what society or culture finds valuable

Why is any of this relevant?

As cultural producers we have a responsibility to respect others on a range of levels

The lecture has discussed ethics is about demonstrating sensitivity to the issue and the people affected

Ethics is also about respecting the ownership of the cultural object or image.

Intertextuality is a popular way of creating work, but there are lines of boundary to consider.

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Video clips

• Strange Culture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMPk9-1uifA

• Witness http://witness.org/

• Engage Media http://www.engagemedia.org/

• RAWA http://www.rawa.us/movies/index.html

References:References: Charles Stuart University 'The Ethics/Skills Interface in Image Manipulation',

(1999) (http://www.csu.edu.au/OZCHI99/full_papers/webber.rtf) Photojournalism-An Ethical Approach 'Photojournalism: An ethical approach'

(1999) (http://commfaculty.fullerton.edu/lester/writings/pjethics.html)

http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/The_Ethics_of_Digital_Image_Manipulation:_Annotated_Bibliography M/Cyclopedia of new media

http://facstaff.elon.edu/andersj/ethics.html Ethics for Digital Information Providers

http://facstaff.elon.edu/andersj/ethicsdiscussion.html Digital Media Ethics Discussion Points

http://wiki.media-culture.org.au/index.php/Copyright M/Cyclopedia of new media

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

References cont…References cont…

http://in3.org/articles/personalethics.htm Copyright, Piracy and Personal Ethics, By Jack Powers, The Journal of the International Informatics Institute, Published: February 27, 2003

http://www.ciconline.org/whatisdigitalethics What is Digital Ethics? http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/media/files/wp2005.pdf Copyright and Digital

Media in a Post-Napster World, Version 2 (Updated January 2005), By GartnerG2 and The Berkman, Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School

http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue45/hoorn/ Repositories, Copyright and Creative Commons for Scholarly Communication by Esther Hoorn

http://www.viscopy.com/ VISCOPY http://bangkok2005.anu.edu.au/papers/Satpathy.pdf Ethics of

RepreseNtATION: Media and the Indian Queer by Sumanyu Satpathy

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane

Herring, S., and Emigh, W., 'Collaborative Authoring on the Web:A Genre Analysis of Online Encyclopedias'(http://csdl2.computer.org/comp/proceedings/hicss/2005/2268/04/22680099a.pdf) Dutton, D., 'Authenticity in Art' in The Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics, edited by Jerrold Levinson New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. (http://www.denisdutton.com/authenticity.htm) Donath, J., 'Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community', Prepared for: Kollock, P. and Smith, M. (eds) Communities in Cyberspace http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html (accessed 21 April 2006)Shaffer, D. W., & Resnick, M., 'Thick authenticity: New media and authentic learning', Journal of Interactive Learning Research, 10(2), 195-215 (1999) (http://epistemicgames.org/cv/papers/thickauthenticity99.pdf)

References cont…References cont…

Slide credit: Tracey Meziane