A while ago, I was wondering about use in terms of dealing with software or net artworks. Of course, "use" is a very broad term that should be considered carefully depending on the angle of observation one chooses. Usage (which would belong to a socio-technic approach I guess), usability (engeneering?), usefulness (pragmatism?), etc.
When it comes to art discourse, I feel like the term is never really defined; the use of "use" is blurry. I find in Saul Albert's really interesting essays, and particularly "Useless Utilities"(2001), an attempt to define technological art as "relevant in multiple context, [...] between use value and conceptual value" - he is following here Matthew Fuller's engaging theory on works that are "not just art", a practice that "rejects the dead end-dichotomy of culture vs. counter-culture and suggests hybridised, developmental, unstable cultural forms that can sustain themselves outside of art's frame of reference and financial backing". The ("not just") artworks he promotes are interfaces between 2 subjectivities: the author's and the user's, the former allowing the later to re-invent his relationship to technique by reprogramming the software as a way of making, thus reprogramming use in an alternative way.
Albert is merely rephrasing the discourse on the artist's power to disrupt dogma and to disturb doxa with an added critical value, an axiom that never really convinces me because it relies on an undefined set of notions (particularly the definition of what "use" is, as I said previously).
But what I find a little more accurate and strong is when Albert gets into the specifics of how the artist reorganizes the context(s) around his work: precisely when the economy of the artwork is expanded beyond the simple museal relationship that conducts most of art consumerism. Albert shows the examples of Adrian Ward's and NN's software artpieces when the art audience is indeed treated as it should be, that is consumers - with corporate-like mailing-lists giving advices about how to use the "product", etc . The brackets here around "product" are not meant to reduce these works to a task of criticism via irony or parody of the corporate world by super-smart artists. On the contrary, the art piece is taken seriously as a product (and this ends the stupid debate over art as process or object).
The question is not whether the art consumer will be able to use the art piece for pragmatic purpose or not, but if she will be integrated with consequences into an informational economy - information as medium, and not as message, though the line between the two is more difficult to draw than people like to think.
Somewhere else but I don't remember where, Albert talks about how conceptual art has been reduced to a "service" provider by the institutions that were feeding the artists with funds/subventions - "service" as in "artists should educate the people". Of course, the "political mission" that avant-garde art has given itself for a while now is not triggered only by evil institutions but also by an intricate internal system of reputation. But speaking about "service" gives a good idea of how artists are confused about their social role play. Along with that confusion of tasks, information tends to become a message again and artists tend to think of themselves as super-heroes.
The expression "use" might be filled with meaning when thought of as a critical means to organize contexts around a practice, to remediate experience. The word "utility" comes in handy to define the use of artwork both by art makers and art consumers (with challenged authority and all that). A kind of utilitarianism without the moral obligation, but with the notion of reorganizing society (or social practices) around you (not necessarily society as a whole, by the way). Utility as "software utility" should also be considered, because it is a use oriented for a specific purpose; what appeals to me here is not really the goal of the purpose, but the scale of the purpose ("small range of tasks"). I like the idea of working on a small scale. But I am hesitant as it might be a seductive and not very good metaphor - after all, Adrian Ward's piece (Autoshop) described by Albert is more of an application than a utility. I don't know but this should be discussed further.
In this situation, the practice of art is not exclusive when it comes to reorganizing contexts but does come up with funny and alternative ways. Albert has a nice ASCII diagram in which what I call "use" is described as "intervention". Though Albert says that the artist's intervention is a short-circuit between software producers and media producers, I believe that this intervention is also the art/media consumer's, thus making the user's role a little bit more interesting than it is generally allowed to be.
This diagram reminded me of a very famous other graph, made by the net/conceptual/entrepreneurial art duo MTAA Enterprises Worldwide (T.Whid & M.River) in their early career (1997 I think). They also challenge the idea of context as something that is eminently variable - and thus able to organize a real economy that you can act upon, and not only accept as unproblematic (and the economy of art is often seen as unproblematic).
I don't know how to conclude this, so I will just point out their Artainment Manifesto and their Website Unseen (1999-2002) series.
Keywords: art, conceptual, consumerism, economy, MTAA, notes, saul albert, software, usability, usage, use, user
Comments
Super interressant post. Je me demande quelle role le mashup en net.art fait dans cette contexte. En generale le mashup est un remix culturelle mais quand c'est applique a un object culturelle qui est au meme temps utile (un application), es-que le but de net.art a question cette 'utilite' et fait un oeuvre qui est en fete complement inutile? Le Bono Probability Positioning System (http://www.stunned.org/bono/googlebono.htm) par example.
merci! sorry i will answer in english to stay in tune with the blog. yes the cultural remix of mashing-up is of course of relevance in that context. a friend of mine sent me an essay by Henry Jenkins quoting Mark Dery's idea of "cultural jamming" (in "Interactive audiences? The collective Intelligence of Media Fans"); my friend was noting that the important thing there was that this cultural practice was claiming to introduce noise in information flows so as to fight against structural dominance. that is also what software artist's manifest as their main work.
about the concept of use, myself i am struggling to find an entry point to making the most of it. i guess i am realizing now that it's not so much the useless(ness) that bugs me in software art, but the usability of the objects produced by the artists. that is something you can call new, in terms of art history. you don't just stand there watching the thing moving, you actually have to/you can manipulate it in order for it to "work" (i guess net art does rely on this too, sometimes, but not always: for instance neen:NO, net.art: YES). nothing crazy of course: it's software after all; and i'm not saying either that it does change completly the relationship to the artwork. i'm not really advocating here software art as a great form of art. but there is a functionality at play which is really attracting and new; it's kind of liberating to be able to think the bono map (very funny by the way) in close relationship and in interoperability to the google map engine (in formalist terms), as well as being able to think about it in terms of consequential collective practice. i'm saying consequential, awkwardly, because it doesn't have the exclusive position that a "non usable" work of art has. i cannot be thought of without the inclusion in an actual information feed, its economics, its sociality, etc. it just wouldn't make any sense. i'm not saying these elements has to be thematized in the work of art, but they should be brought out in its (external) critique.
i think Adrian Mackenzie is doing a great job on software criticism; he the best I've read so far, even if people who come to mind are the Matthew Fuller crew. Contrary to them Mackenzie does not advocate a form of art, he's not selling anything; it makes its judgement precise and "fierce" (i like this word i hear a lot on American Next Top Model and I am going to use it for my "wild theory" program). i hope it makes some kind of sense.
>merci! sorry i will answer in english to stay in tune with the blog
You were good enough to write the post in English, I made the effort to repond in French. English suits me fine.
>i guess i am realizing now that it's not so much the useless(ness)
>that bugs me in software art, but the usability of the objects produced
>by the artists. that is something you can call new, in terms of art history
Yes you've identified in another way what Roy Ascott identified years ago, long before Saul Albert or Lev Manovich, the change of art from artifact to proces-led system. New media art and net.art are on the one hand just one of many forms that follow in this tradition however they also for the first time become a system that is used by it's audience (who of course in turn become users). Art till these has not been designed (and that also raises problems, identity conflict for example as usability has always been a design concern) to be used, it does not fit with the tradition of art which is predominantly meant to reflect its creator, on a pedestal seperated out from the rest of society, and their interpretation of the human condition. New media art reflects it's user and the user / author relationship, it has to, it's its principle reason for being sited within new media.
yes, and i did appreciate the effort! i'm sorry if i was rude by not answering in french, i just got into the habit of speaking only one langage here...
i wish i knew more on cybernetics art... i completely lack knowledge on the subject, it's a shame. i agree that processual systems are far from new in art, but i guess what fascinates me in software art (once again without advocating for or against it) is that it's usability happens out of the art context. of course there is a reconstruction of the art milieu online via new network(ed) legitimacies, the materiality and, to a large extent, the symbolism of the white-walled gallery is gone. when i open a piece of software art i scratch my head just as i do when i open a piece of functional software. at the point of discovery, the habits of experience are leveled in some way.
but contrary to what you're saying, i do not think that the fact that the art lover has to become a user to appreciate a piece of software art, which would imply leaving behind the authoriality of the piece, is enough stressed by software art critique. i hear all the time that the programming reflects the subjectivity of the artist (a subjectivity that is supposedly particularly relevant to deal with the problems of the informational/technological world) and that is what comes out as the most important most of the time: the promotion of personae. that is to some extent what you hear in the "real programmers" culture too actually, it's not only an art thing: the programmer "owns" his code. my point is that in this "owning" of the code by a subjectivity, there is a lot of presumption of what usage is, and thus, it can be read as an interpretation "of the human condition" (even if right, this interpretation is not "out of this world"). there is a lot of discourse by the authors about how users are controlled/manipulated/dumbified, etc. but what i see is a lot of smart usage by a lot of non-expert people. these intepretations are problematic.
oh by the way i just read an article on nonexpert mashup programming that might be interesting to you: http://eduspaces.net/cpb/weblog/162336.html