Art in the age of digital reproduction

Now that the Hands-On Hamilton Art Party is over and done with - hangover faded, glow-stick residue gently fading from my puppy’s fur - I hope to return to a more regular schedule of blogging, one that will no doubt be kick-started back into gear by Art Toronto and the upArt Contemporary Art Fair this weekend. So while I rest up in preparation for that insanity, I’ll be limiting my art-viewing to that which can be enjoyed on my MacBook Pro over a cup of tea.

While there’s little to stop me dropping into the real XPACE in Toronto this weekend, their current web-based project is exactly the sort of work that successfully enhances a real-world practice specifically for the digital realm. Benjamin Bruneau’s Every Wall Drawing #146 is an online iteration of Sol Le Witt’s much-quoted belief that ‘The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.’ Using the variables laid out in LeWitt’s instructions for Wall Drawing #146 (1972), Bruneau’s online project renders all possible outcomes for the conceptual work in a virtual gallery space, an algorithm almost-nearly divorced from human intervention save for the very human impulse to see each variation visually realized.

Bruneau’s ability to perpetuate all the possibilities for LeWitt’s Wall Drawing #146 reveals the sort of capacious power offered by the internet, the sort that Art Fag City’s Paddy Johnson calls upon for the liberation of Ann Lee in response to the Tate Modern’s present exhibition No Ghost, Just A Shell.

Pierre Huyghe & Philippe Parreno, Skin of Light, 2002

Playing on the pervasive themes of purloined identity inherent in the popular anime Ghost in the Shell and other works of the genre, artists Pierre Huyghe and Philippe Parreno purchased the rights to Ann Lee, a meaningless stock background character, in order to liberate her from corporate ownership. Since this conceptual action in 1999, Ann Lee has been the subject of widely proliferated visual variations, her image passed along to other artists to be redubbed and repeated in much the same manner as LeWitt’s stock collection of blue arcs and lines.

While intended as a liberating strategy, perhaps the most compelling element of the Ann Lee narrative today is the impossibility of her complete freedom, online or anywhere. Her use by the artists involved in the project perpetuates her commodity status (complete with sex trafficking overtones) and even Huyghe’s final act of reverting Ann Lee’s copyright onto herself serves only to silence her. In this sticky game of virtual-body politics, it is the disputed distribution of her image that presents a barrier to her status as a being liberated from commodity status.

As Paddy Johnson (and her various commentators) points out, this is easier said than done:

I suppose Ann Lee doesn’t get a say on how her image is used either if I place a Creative Commons share license on my clandestinely taken photographs, but I couldn’t help but think she’d at least gain a little life and energy should she move across the internet. Not that this idea made any difference to the Tate. “No photographs!” a guard yelled at me, as I snapped a photograph of Lee’s projected face. “But I’m freeing Ann Lee from her existence as a commodity!” I protested. He didn’t hear me, but maybe the Internet will. Infuse Ann Lee with life by passing her image along and freeing her from The Tate!

Consider it done. One dodgy jpeg at a time.

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