POINT-AND-CLICK
„The discipline of art requires freedom” – so Stanisław Jerzy Lec, the famous author of aphorisms, says. Nowadays, these words gain new meaning as art, formerly dependant on various cultural institutions and their selective mechanisms (only a part of the artistic production used to be chosen for presentation), is gradually getting a chance to (in)directly reach the audience thanks to the new media. The meaning behind this ambiguous term is a whole revolution, which embraces science, art and technology at the same time. The interweaving of these realms has brought about a completely new model of communication, in which the relation between the artist and the viewer – previously determined by superiority and inferiority – has become an interaction shaped by equality.
How to define “new media?” They are chiefly expansive and include: websites, computer games, interactive installations, computer animations, digital videos etc.
Lev Manovich in his book Język nowych mediów (The Language of New Media) discusses basic tendencies that should be included in the description of new media objects. What must be taken into consideration is their “numerical representation” i.e. digital version, “modularity” (their various elements exist independently), “automation” (they are created and modified automatically), “variability” (they have different versions) and “transcoding” (they can be converted into another format). According to Manovich, new media mean “a new approach to the reality that surrounds us,” which results from new possibilities created by new media. This phenomenon has become the main theme of the latest edition of the Cracovian quarterly “Fragile” (2/2008).
New computer and digital technologies along with the media that use them undoubtedly make their recipients change their attitudes towards the world they live in. It turns out that what has become a determinant of modern means of communication are the intermedia. Artur Trajber in his article Intermedia w Krakowie (Intermedia in Cracow) defines intermediality as mixing, assimilating and synthesizing of various channels in order to achieve the state of independence and autonomy. The peculiarity of such a state stems from going beyond the limits of each medium towards some higher constructs thus making the work unique. The true breakthrough of intermedia consists in, as a theoretician Dick Higgins formulates it, exceeding the boundary of recognizable tendencies and introducing into the artistic creation measures never used before, then rearranging them to create unprecedented configurations. In this way intermedia products are generated. They include such pieces as video-art, installations, performance art, site specific art or cybernetic art.
The transformation of art that takes places thanks to new media is described by Antoni Porczak in his article titled Rzeczywistość medialna (The Media Reality). This process occurs thanks to a series of conversions: from a pigment to an interface (i.e. from a touchable image to an image presented on a screen), from matter to non-matter (from atoms to bits), from avant-garde to network (from individuals to a whole conglomerate), from unidirectional communication to a dialogical one (an interaction between a sender and a receiver), from elitism to egalitarianism (art accessible for only a chosen group of people becomes available to the masses), from hierarchy to pluralism (lack of institutionalized apparatuses of the selection, democratization of the art), from a fully completed work to interaction (stress shifting: from the artistic product to the process of creation itself with the recipient’s active participation), from contemplation to operation (i.e. from a certain reflection to a new kind of perception). What is the most important in this multi-pronged process is the new status of an addressee – a rightful participant in the cultural dialogue, one who can play an active role not only in the consumption of ready-made works, but also in the course of artistic creation itself.
As we enter the era of information aesthetics (a term introduced by Manovich) which indicates a new culture of information society, the virtual addressee becomes the main beneficiary of a new communicative situation, gains another mean of creative expression and can even be awarded the title of the Man of the Year. In fact, “Time” magazine did grant this title to such a recipient in 2006 what has been noted by Łukasz Białkowski in his article Witamy w Twoim świecie! Czyli model kreacji w dobie mediów cyfrowych (Welcome to Your World! The Model of Production in the Digital Era). The observation of some popular web portals such as YouTube or MySpace enables one to notice that the public space of the Internet is approaching the egalitarian and democratic model where millions of users rule with one click of a mouse (the point-and-click in action). This creative freedom, however, leads to certain redundancy of messages claiming to be artistic (for instance thousands of daily videos uploads on YouTube, proliferation of trashy blogs, of which half does not even withstand the test of time, and so on). Such products frequently prove to be of very poor quality and full of clichés. It does not necessarily mean that this sort of activity, like a peculiar kind of auto-therapy, cannot perform other important functions. In the past, a doctor advised the poet Jan Lechoń to write a journal in order to help him face his problems. Nowadays, thousands of people describe their private life on their blogs – their virtual diaries. Nevertheless, there is a substantial difference between these people’s logs and Lechoń’s writings: he used to write down his own memories only for himself, whereas modern bloggers do it for others. It is crucial to think of the extent to which we should regard writing a blog as a creative expression of oneself, and the degree of emotional exhibitionism directed at potential readers. Certainly, the issue comprises a sociological phenomenon, as Małgorzata Lebda remarks in Blogomania (Blog-mania). It goes without saying that blogs are not exclusively the realm of bored teenagers, there is also a vast number of lit-blogs (literary blogs) authored by cultural experts; poets, writers, literary critics, etc. (like Ernest Bryll or Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało). They use this medium as just another arena of meeting with their readers.
It might be that “the progress of civilization and technology is the manifestation of a gradual seizure of the power over the world by a man” (Magdalena Maszkiewicz, W poszukiwaniu gorszej przyszłości – cyberpunk / In Search of a Worse Future – Cyberpunk). Or maybe it is the other way round? According to the cyberpunk depiction of the future, the technological progress will surpass us and from “gadget-lovers” (a term introduced by Mac Luhan, which means a perfect and mutual existence of a man and a machine, the biotic and non-biotic realities combined into one) we will turn into cyborgs with the virtual reality dominating the true world. Is it still an abstract idea or maybe a not-so-distant future?
Dagna Kruszewska
Translated by Katarzyna Cisak