My final research paper

TOPIC: “What is collaborative net art? Define the role as a community building by comparing various kinds of collaborative net art in participatory aspect.”Introduction
In this essay, I will first briefly define what collaborative net art is, and then I will compare and focus on the cooperative net art activities(Zewall, Flickr and ) through internet and illustrate how each of them overcome the obstacles so as to build up a strong community between artists (creators) and audiences (viewers/ respondents).
Defining collaborative net art
First of all, computer, a new and powerful creation tool, has allowed artists a new medium for aesthetic exploration. When it coupled with the Internet, which is highly accessible, has allowed for changes in production, dissemination, and popularity of art in contemporary society. This shows a transformation, revolution of digital art which is currently stems directly from earlier artistic movements, such as the Dada movement that keep art from traditional boring way.
Art in digital age enable an important new form of cooperation as well as a new kind of aesthetic excitement between the artists and the viewers, this is not a one-way direction but both audiences and the artists could act and react so as to achieve a higher level of creation. Therefore, “collaborative net art”, simply means this kind of two-way interaction online (through internet).
Collaborative medium is one of ways to communicate with people who are all over the world. Art medium in the previous which is the only one thing such as some artist’s paintings and sculptures have scarcity value. “Knowledge should be free; Media is kind of team works.”[1]When people want to see the artists’ works, they should go to the certain places such as galleries or museums and then to communicate with them but today we can give the certain places through the online and need not to go out but stay at home.
Photoshop tennis
The pioneer of collaborative activity online is call “Photoshop tennis”. It originated in graphics-related internet forums in the late -1990's/ early-2000's, and was made popular by art director Jim Coudal in 2001.[2] These like a match of playing tennis, players first set the rules and then choose an altered image and then send to other players, the other players who would edit the photo and then send it back to the first player. Although this seems like a game/competition, the spirit of cooperation is actually involved.
Similarities of net art and computer video game
Net art is somewhat different from online video games, but they have shared some similarities. Both require players and each game is different. The nature of online game is collaborative and participatory, this is the players/users often have to collaborate with each other in order to resist the enemy and win the game, so they form a cooperative relationship. Similarities are that they have players/artists and users/audiences. Computer games and the net art usually focus on communities and allow users to create their own representations in the group.
Online communities build up due to technology advancement
In the past, artists made their own art work and left it up for interpretation by the audiences, with the aid of the caption which help the direction to think. Now, net art enables the passive viewers can digitally interpret and appreciate or even take a much more hands on approach to the artists interactively, to help the piece of net art become more perfect.
Indeed, technology allows artists with different skills to come together to create a work in a more creative way, and they don't really need to think and work individually. Apart from using computer software (such as Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.,) and digital tools (DVD player, projector, etc.,) that help artists to create new medium of art pieces, it is interesting that the Internet (as well as the use of e-mail, forum etc,.) could enable artists to work together without being close, and the interaction between the artists and the audiences could also improve the quality of the work as well. These international partnerships help strengthen the artistic bonds around the world, and make for a much more cohesive art community.
What is the most exciting aspect of net art is its ability to interact between the artists and audience as a community/group. An audience was required to perceive the piece in some way in order to enjoy it in the past. Now, he/she is able to step into the piece and invest themselves in the enjoyment of it, even can be “an artist” and thus participate in the piece. Undoubtedly, this allows audiences for a new type of appreciation.
Example of collaborative net art 1: Zewall (http://www.zewall.com/)
Zewall is an online painting website which is highly open to everyone who has access on Internet and welcomes anyone to comment and edit the paintings as they like. The painting wall is easy to use by simply choose a wall of different “locations” (trees, streets, stations, etc.,) and then click to draw on it.
As this is a free painting wall without the restriction of membership, people who would like to draw on the wall should agree the legal notice: “Any material you will post to zewall.com will be considered non-confidential and non-proprietary. The creators of zewall.com do not endorse or necessarily agree with any such material.”[3] in this totally free site. Besides, for ideas exchange and comments, moreover, there is a Blog namely (http://zewall.blogspot.com/) which is open to the public for discussion.
From this example, we learned that with this new participation and collaboration, participates usually don’t need to care about (the name of) who create the net painting originally but they can really mere focus on how to make the painting perfect, this new way of thinking creates a freer, and less official feeling, allowing anyone to comment, act and produce the paintings in Zewall. However, it’s quite hard to form a strong and stable community because of the high transparency (no need to log in, thus less security) so as the high mobility of creators.
Example of collaborative net art 2: Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/)
Flickr is less open than Zewall, but it build a successful and rather “close” community. People can join any group they like, but they have to log in the flickr, that means they should have a membership and identity in flickr homepage first. Once they joined the group, the connection is strong and the relationship is close because the webmaster of the group would send them e-mails regularly whenever the group is updated or anything announced. It also enables international cooperation of art work as it has 8 languages version could be chosen.
For instance, citing a group call “Flickr War and Memory in Art and Photography Gallery” (http://www.flickr.com/groups/war_and_memory/)as an example, there are 108 members in the group and each of them can upload the altered photos/pictures on the group, then others can download, rework or edit the works in order to add their features and make the work into their own styles by changing color and adding special effects etc., thus upload to the group again. It seems that each of the pieces is never reach to the end and finished as people are keep editing the work.
From this example, we also learn that when there is an open collaboration between artists and viewers, the duty of artists (creators) in Flickr were shift to create the frameworks and tools for interactive dialogue. Their job seems very minimal in this situation but they do help to create a participatory culture, showing “two minds are better than one”. In making the interactive paintings/pictures in the Flickr, the platform of art works and the viewers are also interplaying between form and dialogue at the same time. “Arguably, artists controlling media parameters in a shared, co-authored environment are more interested in the cooperative 'reciprocal altruism' of the moment rather than competitive beauty bashing.”[4] In Flickr, people are not competing but is cooperating to make a work perfect.
Example of collaborative net art 3: Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (http://www.teleportacia.org/war/)
With New Media art’s participation elements, each individual literally could has a totally different experience and perspectives with the piece. In Olia Lialina’s My Boyfriend Came Back from the War, the way in which the audience member navigates through the piece, what they choose and click the words are determining the story that unfolds and the experience gained. Although the themes are constantly set, the audiences choose different notions each time. It shows a path and sequence which the audience is following step by step. By having a medium that allows for interactive audience participation (computer and internet), artists are able to not only to stir up emotion of audiences through novel, but can also create works which are different every time they are viewed. The ever changing nature of this kind of project is actually imitating the transformation of the art discipline itself.
In fact, most artists have tried to communicate with public and a wider people for a long time. They do express their feeling and involved “subtexts” through their art works and they want more audiences can see their work. Therefore, Dadaists such as Rodchenko and El Lissitsky used photomontage methods to produce work because they could reproduce the multiple print forms and make artworks easily reach to the mass people.
Nowadays, an interactive medium is current method of tool for artist depiction, because artists not only want viewers to understanding then, but also to participate with their work. It is easy way to make audience understand their works and artists believe that communication is an important element for their creation of work. By choosing the option of the medium and giving reactions, an interactive artwork was success to make people participate to artwork, for example, when audience saw the artworks using medium of animation, film and video, they cannot really concentrate and to control the speed of image and the contents. So sometimes the viewers can hardly understand the artist’s message and artists also lose the aim of making an artwork that is to communicate with the artist.
However, the net artworks offer a strong way to send their own messages to audience directly without any disturbance. In this way, audiences should spend their time in order to try to understand the artwork which it offers the same information and message from the artist’s works towards the audiences.
Like this way, interactivity is more deeply involved to present in traditional cultural forms because they must access through viewer closer attention. For instance, while we are reading a book we can control the speed of reading and stopping as we like and everyone could have a different style of reading. Interactivity is similar as reading a book. Thus, this medium offers artist and views to intertwine deeply. Artists can communicate with public deeper than in the past and the viewer has a significant of position of power and influence in the artist’s work, and so the relationship between artists and audiences’ is thus closer than before as well.
Conclusion
Trust and cooperation is very important in collaborative culture as “Trust and cooperation are endemic to any functioning collaborative environment that scales up from the binary, nearest neighbor, on/off rules of cellular automata to engage in a more multi-dimensional interaction.”[5] We are all glad to see that everyone in the computer world build up strong bonding based on trust and cooperation. All in all, the internet is for everybody to meet interact with no matter of age. Collaborative medium is a contemporary method of communication, it is possible to reproduce and connect between people easily, because the artist works are not only offline any more but also online. Everyone could be an artist and by showing their works on the website to audiences and audiences can easily find out the artist’s works which they would like to see through Internet. When artist works meet audience, it can be completely enables people to get closer than before and to communicate widely, and thus build up a strong and big community across the barrier and become a world vision in the computer world.
Bibligraphy:Books(1)Linda Candy and Ernest Edmonds, "Explorations in Art and technology", Springer, 2002(2)Sher Doruff, "Making art of databases", V2_publishing, 2003(3)Aylish Wood, "Digital Encounters", Routledge, 2007(4)Anne Bentkowska-kafel, "Digital Art History, A subject in Transition", Intellect Books UK, 2005Online Report & Paper(1)Impact of digital imaging on fine art teaching and practice by Max Davison from Staffordshire University: http://www.agocg.ac.uk/reports/graphics/26/node5.htmWebsitesZewall: http://www.zewall.com/classes/wallViewer.php3?street=12Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/youradhere/http://www.flickr.com/groups/458844@N24/http://www.flickr.com/photos/64531266@N00/1520466777/in/pool-458844@N24/http://www.flickr.com/groups/577889@N22/http://www.flickr.com/groups/82904148@N00/
[1] http://www.montevideo.nl/en/index.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoshop_Tennis
[3] http://www.zewall.com/paint.php3
[4] Making Art of Databases by Sher Doruff, 2003 'Collaborative Culture' pp.80
[5] Making Art of Databases by Sher Doruff, 2003 'Collaborative Culture' pp.80