In our waking hours, there is a split between the meat world and the net world.
I know. It’s crazy to apply this binary divide and assume technology is the encompassing power that has over our lives. …But that’s the truth. Without the internet, the current world governments will fall apart.
The only world that matters is the net world; its dependence is an inferior “meat” reality. This, though, is radical on its own because it denies humanity as nothing more than a phase called the “Anthropocene.” It assumes human domination and influence are a fad and that we as humans must get ready for a post-Anthropocene future where we will be replaced by robots or non-human (possibly extraterrestrial) life. This talk is popular among transhumanist and nihilist talking heads like Kohei Saito, Timothy Morton, and Eugene Thacker.
If we have to embrace this human annihilation, we have to accept that the internet is the only tool for our success as human creatives. Artificial Intelligence also challenges how we make “art” and what is ultimately considered “art” in the two worlds. We need AI because it will accomplish the minor tasks that we need to move on to the bigger and more sophisticated ones. This also means that we shouldn’t be putting huge effort into the little things that AI can already do in a minute. However, we should also have the mandatory skill sets and practical knowledge of application in case AI breaks down (and it will). We have to understand what exactly digital art is and what place it is in the world of the internet.
Art in the meat world is defined by the five senses; sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch. An artistic discipline is created around one of these senses. The meaning of art is to be expressive in its selected medium. In the net world, being expressive is quite difficult. People can’t “touch,” “taste.” or “smell” something on the internet (not yet, anyway). We can, however, “see” and “hear” art and music on the internet! The internet is like a virtual reality video game that we get lost in, so we may have a fake simulation of those five senses.
John Berger pointed out in his 1972 documentary Ways of Seeing that art is becoming replicated and cloned, and no original “experience” can be enjoyed. Berger only recited Walter Benjamin’s 1935 commentary, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” giving it a twist for the Boomer generation. Benjamin’s “aestheticization of politics” was a focus found within his interest of Trotskyism and (possibly) Gramscism. The idea of a “culture war” was a new concept in the 1930s, and the focus that “the medium is the message” became a long-running fad up until the 1990s. Today, the global governments use the tool of mass media so they can “manufacture consent” to push political agendas, as noted by Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman to further debunk any egalitarian notion of the happy “global village” that Marshall McLuhan parades about. It is a useless pursuit to uphold a “permanent revolution” in the 21st century.
We are coming to a conclusion about the political left and right divide and realize that we have entered a new stage of disinformation, where only individuals can “consent” to their influences and actions through their own curated and fringe media outlets. These outlets, however, all relate to the same message of the net world, in that liberal posting and sharing is the only thing that matters. Norberto Bobbio was right to assume the rise of consensual identity politics around the terms of left or right as a subculture, where one can say “I am left-wing” just like the other can say “I am right-wing.” However, this also concludes the divide, where both umbrella categories are becoming one subcultural consumer class.
Art cannot have an ideological basis. Expression, beauty, and logic lack the political. Ethics and narratives are one thing, but the aestheticization of these concepts is another. Religion and ideology provide a purpose to produce and a goal to achieve. Devaluing expression, beauty, and logic implies that art is not real. In the net world, we can protect these three concepts by understanding what it means to “post.”
In the early 2000s, YTMND allowed users to post a “YTMND,” or microsite, that included images, sound, and text. We can see, hear, and read a YTMND. Popular trends in the YTMND community are called “fads,” which would later become “memes” in the net world. The eventual creation of YouTube meant that users could upload entire videos and that YTMND became an obsolete medium. “Posting” ranges from whatever is uploaded on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter (now “X”), Instagram, Discord, Telegram, 4chan, or any obscure web forum or chat. Our options are no longer diverse, and all posting platforms have been compromised.
What we post is what matters. It could be a picture, a video, a comment, a cartoon, a radio show, a game, music, or anything that gets stored in the Internet Archive. The inflation setting that every possible human being on the internet implies that certain art is no long longer of value because there are too many channels of “content” creation and/or neglected spaces and channels of posting that people are unaware of. Imagine a Facebook user of 900 “friends” who posts his original memes made in Pixlr, and yet nobody “likes” his daily uploads. This is because everyone left Facebook for another platform (like Instagram being more picture-friendly), and there are too many users doing the same thing on the platform. Or it’s that this user is trapped in an echo chamber but producing for his therapeutic gratification. We have entered a new stage of producing without an audience, in that the posting that is of real value or is good art is being neglected because we are unaware of these private (yet public) isolated posters. I call this phenomenon “dark data” and explain it as “the urge to produce without meaning.”
On the internet, artistic intent is judged solely by the post. What is posted matters. This post may gain likes, “retweets,” and publicity from mainstream outlets. The algorithms lift up the dopamine hits that keep people addicted to the net world. Posting is judged on this hypothetical numbers game and mass “fake by democracy” consensus.
With that being said, digital art can only be conceived through a post. Digital art is judged on the basis if it’s a “shitpost” or not. Or, the user is going through a series of “Y-posting,” where “Y” represents any subject, slang, or activity. One could be “Jucheposting,” “Goonposting,” “Fedposting,” and so on. What exactly is posted is judged on this fleeting merit. If digital art is understood by what is posted, we start to question the entire ideology of the internet. Everyone has equal access and power to post anything they want and shall be judged on what is uploaded to the server.
Posting implies that the art is finished before it can exist. Digital art is not done in a live setting (as we can’t rely on live streams for everything). Art has to be made and finally digitized for the internet. And what can be art is another thing. Everything is up for grabs on the internet, even if it’s not intended as art. Collage is the constant medium of choice, and what samples and video clips we take is now ours to create original art from. As said once by Pablo Picasso, “Bad artists copy. Good artists steal!”
We are reminded what Paul Schuette wrote in his quick instruction manual, Demystifying Max/MSP. To Schuette,
“The larger issue here is that outright stealing is an accepted part of programming culture. Pieces of code are borrowed, share and ripped from other people, and this is what you are expected to do. The best programmers working right now never start with an entirely blank screen. The problem is that people who are new to writing computer code sometimes feel a tinge of morality running up their spine when they ‘borrow’ a piece of code for the first time.”
The realm of digital art is a cycle of inspiration, influence, and mimicry. What we see is up for grabs. What we take is now ours. And what we post from it is how we conceive new digital art. We could be under a parasocial “relationship,” a reality of solipsism, that what we scroll through on “social” platforms influences us directly as artists and intellects. It’s world without Chicago-style citation!
To find the origin of our favorite digital art, we follow the breadcrumb trail home and realize that, like the Big Bang, a random post conceived a new world. The origin of digital art came from posting, and to neglect that reality means we neglect the net world itself.
It’s not that we should think in terms of being in the Anthropocene or embrace a post-anthropocene future. We realize that we a knee deep into techno-singularity. And how we can understand our current reality is rather a reflection of the delusions of undeveloped transhumanism and the cartoon prisons we irrationally embrace.
We cannot discuss digital art unless we talk about the action of posting and how it influences art back into the meat world. Posting is what makes us valued in the art industry. The truth is that we can’t exist as artists without a net world, no matter how much we try to negate it.
The solution means posting without an audience. We don’t need isolated likes and algorithm boosting to be valued. Because there is no value within art, and to exist without purpose means we are truly free. To produce for the sake of it means we are no longer bound to the limits of what we have to produce for “society” and for profit. Artists are a type of malware that works against what the machine intended. No is a “failed artist,” as they love to assume one can either “win” or “lose” in a market of flashy TikTok pornography.
Every time we post, we take up space on the internet. And if we take up enough space, we own it. It’s not done by “culture war” or any persuasion of political powers. All we have to do is post for the sake of it, even if the post is shit.
That’s what it means to be a digital artist.
