On the cusp of the 19th Century, an English poet named William Blake looked around at the changes wrought by the early days of the Industrial Revolution: skies blackened by factory smokestacks, crowded slums occupied by underpaid workers, fabulous wealth for the few and miserable, hopeless poverty for the many.
Is this any way to run a revolution?, he may have asked himself.
Like other writers of the day, Blake sometimes incorporated his doubts into his work. In his poem “London” (1794), he wrote, “I wander thro’ each charter’d street . . . /And mark in every face I meet/Marks of weakness, marks of woe.”
The world is now in the midst of another great economic, social and cultural upheaval: the Internet Revolution.
Some critics and scholars wonder, however, if the current revolution will inspire artists to do what artists traditionally have done: ask important questions about the ultimate cost of progress.
Unlike the Industrial Revolution, the Internet Revolution has transformed the way that artists do their work, from materials to dissemination. A great deal of original, creative work in the visual and literary arts is now being done on the Internet, from hypertext novels to video exhibitions to film shorts.
But will that work undertake the crucial challenge of art — to interrogate the status quo, to demand respect for the individual — or have artists become so bedazzled by the wonders of gadgetry that their work is essentially decorative? As the Internet increasingly shows up as a subject of art, how will the creative imagination interpret its influence on our lives?
When might on-line art go from “Gee whiz!” to “Hmm”?
Certainly, there is art — poetry, sculpture, video — that questions the rampant rise of technological innovations such as the Internet, that, so to speak, holds its feet to the fire. Science fiction novels and films have long used their visions of the future to comment obliquely on the present. In the 1970 film “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” two computers link themselves in a crude, version of an Internet, a virtual handshake that, because the computers are hooked up to essential systems such as the United States military, results in world chaos.
In “The Net” (1995), the Internet is depicted as an isolating force with a distinctly malevolent edge, capable of wrecking the life of the hapless woman played by Sandra Bullock. The film makes it clear that, even before the villains employ the Internet to strip Bullock’s character of her identity, the Internet has already boxed her in. She doesn’t know her neighbors; she orders her pizzas on-line.
Like other Internet-based films such as “Hackers” (1995), “The Net” was widely dismissed as a silly thriller rather than an insightful exploration of how the Internet is affecting contemporary life. Cinema art about the Internet still seems to be in its infancy, as artists must figure out how to simultaneously deconstruct and deploy a medium that is changing everything.
Among the difficulties might be the fact that, when it comes to accessing the Internet, not much happens. The Industrial Revolution was filled with vivid scenes: narrow-faced children working long hours at grueling labor; verdant fields ground flat beneath the heavy stamp of factories; streams choked by industrial waste.
Depicting a person using the Internet, however, would be rather less dramatic. Unless the Internet enthusiast knocks over a Dr. Pepper on the keyboard or drops Pop Tart crumbs in the CPU, where’s the action?
That may be why artists who want to do more than merely represent the Internet in their work face a sort of creative ambiguity. They want to chronicle how the Internet is changing what we see — but they also want to use the Internet as their eyes.
“I walk into a lot of galleries and say, `Oh, another pile of TV sets,'” said Jed Perl, art critic for The New Republic. “The fact of the equipment becomes the controlling factor. The artists might say, `That’s the point.’ And I say, `Well, OK, that’s your point.'” But what’s the point of that point?
Such installations often come across as gimmicks or as celebrations of clever gizmos, because they don’t ask penetrating questions about the Internet’s impact on contemporary life. There is a great deal of art on the Internet, but there is not a great deal of art “on” — that is, concerning — the Internet.
The reason, said new media critic Terry Harpold, is that the Internet’s potential as an artistic medium is so entrancing, so seductive, that artists may try to take shortcuts around the thought processes that must underlie quality art.
“For my students, the technical work is so easy to do that they don’t do the conceptual work. They’ll create this flashy thing that zips around the screen and blips and bleeps. I say, `OK, so what is it for?’ and they don’t know,” said Harpold, an assistant professor at Georgia Tech. “I try to explain to them that there’s some mental work involved.”
Harpold agreed that art has always been at the forefront of critiquing social changes such as the advent of the Internet age. “Art on the cutting edge has always been a critical practice, always directed at criticism of the present political moment.”
Novelist Richard Powers is one of the few writers to use the Internet as more than backdrop for sci-fi adventures. In “Galatea 2.2” (1995), he explores the seductive power of networks. And Kurt Andersen’s 1999 novel, “Turn of the Century,” employs the Internet and its bewildering capacities as an ironic commentary on the quest for power through information. For many writes, however, it has proven difficult to feature the Internet as a protagonist in any way beyond the celebratory.
N. Katherine Hayles, professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of “How We Became Postmodern: Virtual Bodies In Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics” (1999), thinks she knows why: Unlike the Industrial Revolution, which had a built-in downside that artists could exploit, the Internet Revolution has been a steady, upward curve.
“The Industrial Revolution had all kinds of terrible side effects, such as pollution and child labor. Here, we’re in a period of unparalleled prosperity.” Unlike the Romantic and Victorian era poets and essayists, then, today’s artists don’t have the negative effects of the revolution — hunger, exploitation, despair — staring them in the face each day. The rising tide of Internet technology has lifted an entire flotilla.
Most of the art that deals with the Internet and other forms of technology, she added, are ironic and satirical, almost playful, instead of relentlessly critical. Even that, however, can be helpful, Hayles said, and may represent a sort of first wave of Web art that deals critically with the information culture.
“There’s an awful lot of Net art that is interested in understanding what the Net is all about. Art is interrogating the technology,” she said.
Perl, author of “Eyewitness: Reports From an Art World In Crisis” (2000), said there is another reason why artists may not be flocking to deal with the Internet as a subject matter: It’s old news.
“Technology — new materials, new ways of putting things together — were in use all through the 20th Century. It’s been going on a very long time. Every time there’s a new technology, there’s a tendency to think, `Everything is different.’ That’s just not the case.
“Hubris is thinking that everything will change in our day.”
Still, Perl believes that artists who explore the Internet’s character may be rewarded. “As an artist, you have to regard technology as having a quality. You bring a personal view to the impersonality.”
Lucretia Knapp, a New York-based artist who works frequently on the Internet, said she tries to question Internet ergonomics in sly, subversive ways. “Joan,” a multi-media work, features a TV set and a red button. Pressing the button initiates parodies of actress Joan Crawford.
“With the Internet, we’re so entranced by the fact that we can push buttons,” Knapp said. “It’s the simplest kind of technology — pushing a button — but it starts everything on the Internet. Part of it is pleasure, part of it is magic, part of it is control.”
Stephanie Strickland, a poet and novelist who lives in New York, has published work both on the Internet and on CD-ROMs. Critiquing the Internet is part of her mission, she said. “I look at whether we’re getting our guidance from technology.”
Harpold, who helped plan the second annual Digital Arts and Culture conference earlier this year in Atlanta, said he is optimistic about the potential for Internet art that gets behind the flash and dash of technology.
“There’s a particular burden placed on art in the digital field. The tools that we use, the metaphors that we use to conceptualize new media, have grown out of the traditions of cognitive science, a kind of hard-science view of the world. It’s a specific world view that leaves behind a lot of achievements of literature and art in the last 100 years or so.”
The challenge, then, is to use the Internet to get to know the Internet better — and its effect on art and life.
“Artists are beginning to experiment and convert the fundamental conventions of computer science. They’re saying, `What can we do with this technology that doesn’t see it as a glorified adding machine?'”
