Edward Shanken on Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:57:56 +0200 (CEST) |
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Re: <nettime> Fwd: Wikipedia challenges "Wikipedia Art" |
Hello all - I'd like to share an excerpt of a longer piece, in which I discuss some of my views on Wikipedia Art. The full article (an interview conducted by Annet Decker), "Inventing the Future: Art and Net Ontologies," and will be published in the next month or so in the volume _Walled Garden_ Amsterdam: Virtueel Platform, 2009. ... An example of this balance between friction and lubricity, between limitations and boundlessness in digital art is the controversy in February 2009 over Wikipedia Art. The artists proposed a work of art, the nature of which demands that it be hosted on Wikipedia. This creates friction. Because that context, which is the only context the work can coherently exist in, is hostile to anything that is not verifiable by Wikipedia standards (essentially a reference in a peer review publication.) As there were, at the time, no peer review publications that asserted the authenticity of Wikipedia Art as a bona fide art project, the editors deleted the entry. Wikipedia itself is an excellent example of a walled garden. It has very strict rules, and there are good things about those rules and there are bad things about those rules. Wikipedia’s rules are meant to ensure that the information in the online encyclopedia is accurate. But those rules also prevent the publication of some potentially valuable information. The Wikipedians accept that trade off because in a larger ecology of scholarly information, Wikipedia is struggling for recognition and acceptance as a respectable, bona fide encyclopedia and must uphold certain standards in order to attain that status. Wikipedia Art was not censored by Wikipedia. Indeed, the artists provoked the Wikipedians, who responded in a way that was coherent with their rules. Nonetheless, the clash of two incompatible systems - Wikipedia Art and Wikipedia – generated a great deal of tension, demonstrating the limits of each and resulting in fascinating caricatures of artists trying to break rules and encyclopedists insisting on observing them. The theatricality of the interaction was as remarkable as it was predictable. This clash illustrates the process of negotiation between diverging value-sets that occurs during the shuffling and reconfiguration of boundaries and walls. This is an ongoing process: things build and build and build on themselves such that highly disputed concepts can become so naturalized that it may become difficult to imagine what it might have been like to envision the world from the perspective that challenged them. For example, in the twenty-first century, it is difficult for the untrained eye to grasp what was so radical about Impressionist painting in the mid-nineteenth century. Although Wikipedia Art mounted an intense attack on the inherent values of Wikipedia, it has not succeeded in changing them. If Wikipedia Art ultimately succeeds in posting an enduring entry in Wikipedia, it will be interesting to see to what extent that page strictly follows the rules and to what extent it alters the encyclopedia’s inherent value system. But perhaps what is most interesting about Wikipedia Art is that, at the moment, it inhabits an in-between space. It exists virtually. Although there is no Wikipedia Art page in Wikipedia proper, documentation about the debate between the artists and the Wikipedians currently exists as part of the Wikipedia archive. This form of quasi-existence demarcates a somewhat paradoxical ontological state, a condition of virtuality that seems to be an increasingly prevalent or explicit characteristic of contemporary being. The forms of creativity, communication, and productivity that emerge under these conditions may offer useful insights into the future... -- Edward Shanken http://artexetra.com Newly published: Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon, 2009) http://artelectronicmedia.wordpress.com On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 4:52 AM, patrick lichty <voyd@voyd.com> wrote: > Yes. > We of the WPA "cloud" have seem these signs and portents brewing for some > time, and are girding for the greatest net wars sinse Toywar, Joywar, and > Catnarok. <...> # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mail.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org