The problem with the people in this video is quite simply that they have all these tools to help them express themselves but I cannot for the life of me figure out what they have that is worth expressing. They seem to be in this perpetual state of doing.
They seem to be the electronic artist version of people who suddenly are 'in a band'.
True. But apparently New Media Artists are struggling to be able to remain in that position, against the object-based world of fine arts with its galleries and art fairs.
I'm reading
an article about this by Domenico Quaranta
We've experienced some of this ourselves, first hand, when we were
internet artists confronted with
the interest of real-world museums. We resisted most of their attention (we famously refused to be included in the Whitney Biennial e.g.) but many of our colleagues did not. They started making prints or other types of objects that "fit in". So I can sympathize with a certain struggle for emancipation of a new artistic practice.
That being said, I agree with you completely: many of our artistic friends who use technology in their practice, are stuck in a perpetual state of "playing". There's a constant stream of workshops, festivals and other events to keep these people's minds off the realization that they are actually not creating anything. Which I think is a pity because many of these people really are very talented. They simply choose not to devote this talent to make something beautiful and meaningful. Which again, to some extent, I find it difficult to blame them for. Because dealing with beauty and meaning more or less equates suicide in contemporary fine art. Which leads me to my current pet peeve that the current fine arts are irrelevant, that as artists we need to situate ourselves alongside the wide range of imagery and stimulation offered by cinema, books, internet, advertising, games, etc. Let's not retreat into a little corner with perfect conditions for appreciation, let's step out there, in the light, where people cannot deny our existence; so that it becomes their own responsibility to reject art from their lives.
It probably is good to be old fashioned - or to be terribly new. It is being contemporary which brings forth this sheer 'expressism' nonsense.
Haha. Time may be somewhat stretchable. But we all live together in this precise same moment. It's kind of beautiful, too.
