The Disappearance of the Art Object
Symposium:
- ISEA98: Ninth International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More presentations from ISEA98:
Session Title:
- Virtual Interventions: Digital Avant Gardes
Presentation Title:
- The Disappearance of the Art Object
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
These auratic shapes fill physical spaces and mirror endless outward and inward transactions of cultural codes. Inscribing dominant western cultural codes into an art object produces a unique commodity with speculative exchange value. While the visual representations etched onto the object grant it its integrity, they are held captive by its definition as a commodity. Digital technology functions as a means of producing, distributing, and viewing cultural codes, never becoming an art object. This disappearance of the object emancipates the art producers, their production, and their viewers, from the bondage of the mirrored object situated in the commercial context. Stripping the artistic codes from their material objectivity, freeing them from the constraints of the art market, delineates new possibilities for making art, which is oppositional, radical and autonomous. The possibility of a state of mind of detachment from material objectivity, combined with the digital means of creation, can extricate a stream of free imagination that would melt into endless web arrangements of distribution. This could result in a practical context functioning as a metaphor for fragmented society. Are these the conditions for the collapse of the hegemony of the art object?
