Art&art - A parody of aesthetic illusion

In The Age of NFT’s, Part 1

For the vast majority of human history, art has been understood in its geographical and sociopolitical context, and traditional media viewing conditions are frequently linked to their physical conditions and locations. The ‘Aura’, termed by Walter Benjamin in his influential 1936 essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, outlines’ even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.’ He referred to this unique cultural context, i.e., “its presence in time and space” as its’ aura’. Following Walter Benjamin’s, John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing discussed not only how photography changed the way we understand art, images, and representations, but also how the moving image, and television as a medium, participate in this ever changing dynamics of image consumption.

Digital native art lifts away this background or “aura” and provides an incorporeal and ephemeral element with interchangeable contexts. Artists today create work solely for the purpose of being viewed on screens. This format lends itself to a more personal viewing experience of art, marking a significant change in the perception that art can not only use technology as a tool for creation but also how technology creates the conditions for the reception of art. In other words, artists can now “bypass any system of selection, mediation, contextualization, and filtering, and address viewers directly, making their way into their computer screens and using them like a Trojan horse to break into their minds.”

“When a viewer looks at our [Art]work, we are inside his computer.” There is this hacker slogan: “We love your computer.” We also get inside people’s computers. And we are honoured to be on somebody’s computer. You are very close to a person when you are on his desktop. I think the computer is a device to get into someone’s mind. We replace this mythological notion of a virtual society on the net or whatever with our own work. We put our own personality there. “ - Tilman Baumgartel, “Interview with Jodi”, in Telepolis, 1997

Domenico Quaranta’s book, In Your Computer, presents this change with a gap that still remains “between those who have learned to enjoy their computers as a place of legitimate, direct, and authentic artistic experience and those who still perceive them as conveying a mediated, indirect experience of art.” “Between those who understand the strange mix of intimacy—it’s here, on my screen—and monumentality—it’s out there, in the public domain, accessible to everyone—that all online artworks possess…….” they further go on to say ‘Rather than a value judgement, it’s a difference that distinguishes communities. You have a unique way of looking at the world. And you would like other people to see it’

Critics of NFT’s might say, “From Paul Kleen to Nam June Paik to Corey Arcangel; what needed to be said about technology has been said already,” but they seem to forget the exponential growth in technology develops our ever-changing perception of how we view the world, which in turn changes the conditions for art and its reception. What was true 5, 10, let alone 30 years ago, isn’t true now. NFT’s capture what it means to be an artist now, to create for a digital native audience where you can own digital work, and all this originated from and is an extension of crypto culture. The digital revolution is first and foremost a technological revolution. This brings about a change in the general mindset. The change being presented here is not a change in the art world itself. Rather, the change we see is in the audience, it’s in the viewer, and this change is permanent.

Note: This was written to contextualize and document my experience. I felt a need to write not only about my work but also about this space. I had great conversations and met some amazing artists who love both Art&art