Globalism, art and error!

Errors, glitchs and a new conception of digital arts in the contemporaneity. Is it possible to understand the process of globalism through the role of art in the mass media society?

Paul James, a professor of Globalization and Cultural Diversity at Western Sydney University and Director of the Institute for Culture and Society, defines globalism as an ideology in which subjectivity was a global extension. At the same time Dr. James warns, “we have to consider the danger of lossing the identity of the particular national culture in favour of the creation of a global culture that levels all the differences in a homogeneous uniformed culture.” The consequence of this process has been analyzed by Bolter and Grusin who pointed out how in the post globalism societies the media communications are much more easy and understandable in consequence of common media aesthetic.

This process also effects arts as a very important part of culture. It appears that some aspects of aesthetics can be used and understood all around the globe. An example of this new process could be observed in modern art. In some contemporary artistic movements we can easily find reflection of the modern mass media society. The artists are working with all multimedia's products as video games, digital errors or glitch (it is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it), west and imperfections of productions, and this all came from the mass media. In the transition from classic art to modern art it could be observed that the most important attribution which new artists should have are not anymore the technical skills but the emotional skills. The ability to inspire emotional movement inside of the viewers has become indispensable for the art producers. It started to be a crucial point because the artists started to work with material that for them self nature is immaterial: digital video, photo or music files. They don't use material that can be manipulated directly with hand or tools anymore. The modern artist works directly inside of the material manipulating the source code to create new digital aesthetic and trying to feel the gap between the perfection of the machines and the imperfection of the nature of the human being.

In 1917, Marcel Duchamp exhibited “Fountain” in New York. Whit this artwork, that is probably the most provocative of the “ready-made”series, Duchamp appealed all the critic and the attention of the society. Indeed, the philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy remarked that with that artwork the artist made definitely a brake with the classic art because “his art doesn't have noting in common with all the previous art traditions”.

What the Duchamp's art and the Glitch art movement artists have in common? Both use materials coming from the cultures where they are immersed in. The first used common objects, the other is doing the same process but instead of “real objects” they work with the code, bit and algorithms to modify files and multimedia products.  This contemporary digital art movement uses the mistake and its manifestation, the glitch, as fundamental mechanisms of the artistic creative process. In both cases we can reveal as the societies effected in the art process and in the mass media society, that the artists can't work without becoming a mix between programmers and visual communicators anymore.

The fact that the artistic movement, as glitch art, has become much more popular is directly connected with the development of modern society of mass media where all the multimedia products are selected from perfect aesthetic characterized by high quality images, high speed communication and by portability of products.

As soon as the regional cultures were levelling out to the mass media culture, more artists started to recycle all the material coming from that society as social critics or just as emotional expression of it.

Such artists as Robert Overweg who defines himself as a “photographer in virtual“- work directly in the virtual world of video games exactly as it would have been in the real world. His artworks shows imperfect worlds, isolated and mystic atmosphere where the manifestation of the machine's imperfection becomes the focus of his project. The errors which are the most human beings’ characteristic of the machines became the focus for several artists belonging to Glitch Art Movement.

Is it possible to understand the process of globalism through the role of art in the mass media society? That would be not the only way to understand this big and complex topic but through the art analysis it is possible to find a different way to approach the topic.

Icaro Orengo

 

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