The book Interaction: Artistic Practice in the Network (2001) edited by Amy Scholder and Jordan Crandall is a forum-based debate among different artists, scholars, students, critics etc. about art on the Internet. In the Introduction, Jordan Crandall writes about how online communication tools have changed the art process: “With the Internet, we have a vehicle of artistic production and distribution on a scale we have never seen before.” He claims, that “its relationship to the museum/gallery system is not as urgent as the need for the continual development of inclusive platforms that take full advantage of networks”, and that “the relevance of art must (also) be debated in a US-dominated, globalized culture that, on the one hand has no use for art, and on the other hand regards everyone as an artist who can advantage of digital tools”. Thanks to the fact that artistic expressions can be possible on a global scale, Crandall says that the context of art is rapidly expanding towards more inclusive and more democratic realm. Moreover, in his work The Electronic World: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (1993), Richard Lanham agrees that “the electronic word democratized the world of arts and letters” (Lanham in Grusin 1996: 40). What could follow is what Crandall calls “a vast expressionistic soup”, meaning that there is a danger that ‘everything’ can be art – from design and advertising, to business, streamed videos, and lifestyles (as ‘the art of living’) (Crandall 2001: 3).
References:
Scholder, Amy and Jordan Crandall (2001): Interaction: Artistic Practice in the Network. New York: Distributed Art Publishers Inc.
Grusin, Richard (1996): What is an Electronic Author? Theory and the Technological Fallacy. In Markley, Robert (red.). Virtual Realities and Their Discontents, s. 39-53. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Michael Miller, the author of the book YouTube 4 You (2007) claims it is not the videos that make YouTube so appealing but "the sharing aspect of the site that defines its success". Although I have already discussed that in one of my previous blog posts (about being an active media 'prosumer'), YouTube visitors need both consume and contribute the videos. That's the basic concept of collaboration, which can - somehow - turn the YouTube users into being a part of 'mass collaboration on builing an enormous video database', too! But I should rather stick to my research paper in the first place, and leave this interpretation open to discuss some other time...
Reference:
Miller, Michael (2007): YouTube 4 You. Indianapolis: Que Publishing.
